@@Lorekeeper72 Windhelm. The murder quest actually has a hidden timer that starts when you firsts enter the city and if you don't finish it you can't buy the house which locks you out of one of the stones.
@@Majvfb also, if your game for that quest bugged out. You can just start by getting in to hijerm and itll start. After that DONT TALK TO THE STEWARD. Talk to the wizard
Its not entirely bad, its just the guy u have to kill at the end of the chambers is kinda annoying and got a fucking soul that fights after he dies so its really annoying
In earlier versions of the game, the stones weren't even anchored to their spawn points. They could be knocked around the room by effects such as your shouts. So if you were running through a dungeon but unaware that a stone was hidden there, and if you were using one of the game's foremost combat mechanics, there was a good chance that you might accidentally send the stone flying into some obscure corner without even realizing it.
@@Peglegkickboxer they do give you money, by making you find more gems in containers when the quest is completed. The problem is they give you money at the stage you don’t need money anymore, because among other reasons, you have to buy the most expensive house in the game to get one of them.
The problem...is that it could have been a good quest.....Look up rumors in cities that say where you find a stone, receive them as quest rewards, radiant thief quests that let you rob an owner of the stone, so many different ways to make it good.....instead we had this......
There's got to be some weird Bethesda rule that every one of their games needs one terribly shitty quest like this to make the others come up smelling like roses or just be a point of infamy and talk
@@ryanbowman8708 I personally don’t hate it either, but a lot of people don’t like that it just starts speaking without you doing anything, and that you can’t really get rid of it
The thing that bothers me the most about this quest is not that there are no markers telling you each stone location, but that when you find a stone, there’s no unique identifier or parentheses next to the stone telling where you found it
@@TheManeymonquest items show weight but they indeed don't actually stack up with your current load - tired of seeing this misconception 12 years after the initial release
All locations of the Stones of Barenziah: Proudspire Manor (Solitude Player Home Master Bedroom) Blue Palace (In Jarl Elisif's quarters) Reeking Cave (Beneath the Thalmor Embassy) Dainty Sload (Captain's quarters, docked near Solitude) College of Winterhold (Arch-Mage's Quarters) Yngvild (North of Winterhold's coast, in the bedroom behind the throne room) Hob's Fall Cave (Winterhold, in the necromancer's sleeping area) Treasury House (Markarth, on a nightstand in the Master Bedroom) Understone Keep (Locked side room of the Dwemer Museum) Dead Crone Rock (on a makeshift altar) Jorrvaskr (Kodlak's bedroom) Whiterun Hall of the Dead (In one of the crypt alcoves) Dragonsreach (Jarl's Bedroom) Rannveig's Fast (Table in the room with Sild the Warlock) Fellglow Keep (workroom at the top of the front foyer) House of Clan Shatter-Shield (Windhelm, in a bedroom) Palace of Kings (In Wuunferth's quarters, on a table) Stony Creek Cave (In the Bandit Wizard's cavern) Ansilvund (Near Fjori's ghost in the burial chambers) Sunderstone Gorge (On the altar in front of the Word Wall) Dark Brotherhood Sanctuary (On the dresser in Astrid's room) Pinewatch (In a locked treasure room) Mistveil Keep (Beside the Jarl's bed) Black-Briar Lodge (Upstairs Master Bedroom) The crown is in Tovald's Crossing, accessed through Tovald's Cave southwest of Riften.
Well, yeah. They’re just in black reach. Even if it takes you six hours, it’s only one location. And also blackreach is probably the coolest location in the game so it goes by quick
Yeah it always intimidated me, but the last time i played i decided to do it. It was actually quite fun because it encouraged me to explore more of black reach. Only took like an hour too. Not only are they all in blackreach, but the game literally tells you to look around the water which immediately eliminates a lot of possible surface area
To be honest, I didn't even try to finish the quest without the mod, all those years ago when Skyrim was still a new game and I was playing it through for the first time. I might have got something like a dozen stones before I looked for a mod. Every player comes across some of them, whether they wanted or not. It's such an awful quest. Like someone else said, it coud have been an awesome quest tied to a whole bunch of other random quests, but Bethesda decided to do lazy todds and the rest is history best forgotten.
@@jab9109 Yeah the reward is pretty broken tbh lol. You literally get unlimited cash essentially. My main character has more flawless diamonds than I could ever actually sell.
The quest would be infinitely better if it was just "You can sell the stones for increasing amounts of gold, and you get a bonus for getting them all", so you at least get *something* for finding some of the damn things. The excuse of "even though these are gems from a royal crown, no one wants to buy them unless you have the whole set" is absolutely nonsensical.
It's because supposedly they're anchors for an enchantment, without the whole set you have an active carved soulgem that you have no idea what it will do if triggered, in actuality the gems power a minor feather enchantment that removes 90% of the weight from the ugly solid gold crown.
@@TheSucidalpanda You're a rich noble in Skyrim, you have all the money you'll ever need... but it's Skyrim within a month you've done everything and now you have nothing better to do than sleep next to a glowing floating gem that may or may not kill you because that's the only thing that makes you feel alive anymore. We can all be Nezeem who gets to annoy a mercenary until they finally kill him, we don't get that kind of high!
To be fair, atleast with the nirn root they make a sound when you get within a certain radius of them. Which makes finding them easy. Haven't found one of these stones yet but I don't think they do the same thing. And since I haven't found one yet even by accident that kinda tells me how hard these are to find
An added problem with this quest is that the reward effect comes far too late to be useful, I think. By the time you complete this quest, there is probably nothing left you really need to spend money on, and you probably have a stockpile of at least a few hundred thousand gold. At that point, finding gems in every chest just creates a new way to clog up your inventory list.
money is basically worthless in the elder scrolls games because you find ancient loot so powerful you may as well be a gundam in the first dungeon you walk into all the time
@goggles789 I tried to focus on it as my very first quest, using the marker mod and internet guides to maximize efficiency. Even then, the quest is so massive and related to so many other quests and requirements (I had to buy the most expensive house in the game, seriously wtf?) that by the time i got the crown I was at level 38, had full Dragonbone armor and weapons and the most expensive house in the game. I use a mod where you can spend flawless gems to fortify enchantments, so the prowlers blessing really helps in that regard, but in vanilla i wouldn't consider the reward to be worth the trouble.
Not to mention doing this quest organically instead of just chasing after them specifically gives you the reward in the absolute endgame when it's almost worthless.
@@xshadowwidness why are you defending something that's objectively useless? by the time you do enough content to happen upon all of the stones you already have more gold than you could ever use. and get this, the stones of barenziah quest is part of the base game. before the dlc's existed. so your point is even more irrelevant. it's not bad on its own. but the way the economy is in skyrim, its useless. if smithing and alchemy items didnt sell for so much, and if vendors didnt run out of gold from selling them one decent item, it would be really cool.
@@Purriah cause i love the Game and complaining of something That is not Bad, when there are better options like "Secrets in the roots", "The lady of whispers's quest" the ones who call it useless are the ones who don't know how to explote it. Merchants can increase their inventory if you finance them. Khajite caravans have a lot of Gold, not to mention fences It should also not be added that gems are necessary to create objects Like the arcane spiders for example. Besides i did a quick research just to remind me, and You don't Even have to finish the Main campaing yo get all stones, just need to finish Whiterun Arc and start the Firts mission of every faction, except those of the civil war
I like the idea that, to make up for every other quest being map-markered to all get-out, they'd have one, traditional, map-markerless quest. It's like Morrowind, again, yeah? Except there are no clues, no interesting interactions, nothing. You just randomly bump into them and take them or look them all up. There was so much potential here!
So they are like the Dragon Priest Masks hidden quest. Except there are no clues, no interesting locations, they all have weight, some stack but some don't, you can't place them in a chest, have a needlessly huge amount (24 for fuck sake), and are basically useless until you get the full set. Fuck you Vex, you can go look for these by yourself, ill rather fight some op dragon priests.
If you just go to Tovald's Cave during the quest, no matter how many stones you have, you can just use a dinner plate to no clip through the rocks and pick up the Crown of Barenziah. It advances the quest to end and you get the reward, easy clap.
Actually don't need the quest to be active to do it, I walked in at level 12 and got the thing. This however breaks the physics on the stones and they'll float by meh.
You don't need to find all 24. Pro-tip; tap the button as fast as you can when picking up a stone. There's a slight delay in the game when you select "pick up" and when you actually pick up the stone. If you tap it fast enough, the game registers you picking up 2 or even 3 stones instead of 1
@@captainmoostache5578 be sure to have spoken to Vex after finding the first stone, though. The counter doesn't start until the name changes from "mysterious gem" to "stone of barenziah" I'm not sure if it works with either name, but I'm hedging my bets and telling you to speak to Vex as soon as possible
@@captainmoostache5578 I'm like 90% sure it doesn't matter, but I'm 100% sure it works once the name changes because you get two or three quest update notifications when you do
You know, they could have an unofficial patch quest(s) where after a certain amount of time after you find the first stone, a courier finds you and gives you a letter which would say a rumor where another stone is located, show a new location on the map, and it could be from an anonymous source. I would much prefer that than having to just hope I come across one without looking it up.
The irony is that I played the game so much that i found the majority of the stones organically through doing missions and exploring. Only had to look up the location for like 2 of them when I wanted to complete the mission.
To anyone doing the quest for a repeat playthrough. start the quest and then go to the cave where you get the crown. Eventually without all 24 stones you'll reach a dead end. But you can actually no clip/large platter through the wall and finish the cave and get the crown of barenziah. Which you can then take to Vex and complete the quest way faster and get your gem power.
@@Papa_Straight Prowlers profit: Unique buff given from completing the no stone unturned questline and turning it in to Vex at the thieves guild. It gives most dungeon loot containers (Urns and chests) A high % of spawning 1-4 gems of any kind, and of either quality normal/flawless But never "Exquisite sapphires" which is a unique reward from sapphires hidden questline.
@@JJ_SDWR There is a glitch in skyrim that allows you to go through doors and thin walls if you run into them while holding a plate. There's also a glitch that allows you to levitate by holding a bucket.
This quest could've been a cool Morrowind style markerless quest if there was a book full of riddles or clues to the stones locations that vex could give you. Edit: imagine if M'aiq the liar gave the riddles, that would be cool
Riddles and or some barely vague enough hints are the best way to handle these kinds of quests in games. Like finding the memories in BOTW requires locating key landmarks in a set of photographs.
Oh yeah morrowind is unique as its own, take me a whole month to finish the game during 2003 and also get in trouble for almost not finishing homework lol
Maybe you could've had Vex give you a lead on the ones owned by random people in cities at least. Perhaps she could give you a new lead each time after you do a repeatable thieves guild quest for her. Just something simple like 'I've heard that Jarl Balgruuf is in possession of one of the stones of Barenziah.'
The only thing I can compare it to is the ten Propylon Indices, one of the only items that could be used for fast travel across Vvardenfell, which are placed in seemingly random locations. However, it actually makes sense that they’re hard to find since their function is so obscure. The only people who possess them are Telvanni mages, Daedra worshippers and traders who don’t know their real value. Once you find one, you aren’t given a quest to search for them all, or even the suggestion that there’s more than one.
I don't know much about Barenziah outside of the fact she's been around a long time and I've yet to read her biopgraphies, so I can't comment on what the stones mean in relation to her but... I feel as though the stones are intentionally a sort of curse/trap thing where you see one and it's immediately enticing and you assume it has value. It's sort of a Mummy's Finger from Daggerfall where you are tricked into something you didn't want through what seemed to be a very favorable and (upon first seeing it and not knowing what it is) important item. Does this make for good gameplay? Not really. It sure is memorable though. I feel if you could at least put quest items into a container you own that would be the safest and most pain free method of dealing with it, or the mavis beacon, or all those damn instruments.
Can't wait for the follow-up where Walter rolls around on the floor laughing maniacally after finally returning the final stone and realizing the reward really wasn't worth it at all.
It's especially fun that the stones in Fellglow and Pinewatch are bugged and sometimes don't spawn, so you end up permanently incapable of getting more than 22 stones
...But you can always "reload" the cell until you can pick the stones. Just be sure to have a save before going to those locations and you will be golden.
If you repeatedly press pick up fast enough, one stone can become 2-3 or more, so you can have more than enough. It's a bug and it works. Talk to vex first though.
@@Silembr It's sporadic. Sometimes they spawn just fine. I think it's about time somehow, but I don't know the details; I typically play for hundreds of hours before I get to this quest.
The glitch on Xbox 360 where you could click A very fast and get multiple stones from 1 was very nice. The effect is really noticeable too. Every dungeon and cave you acquire a lot more precious stones
Don't talk to her until _after_ you've got them all, otherwise they will stop stacking in your inventory and be annoying to scroll past every time. Thanks, Bethesda, "Triple A" game studio.
Bethesda games at release are for those who want to play a buggy, broken mess. Thankfully, the studio has decided to keep releasing the game for nearly 11 years now. Good thing they're not resting on their laurels.
The stones' quest was actually ingenious. There's scattered around Skyrim, but you'll mainly find them during questlines. It rewards you for playing the game to completion and getting to know the world.
I've gotten these stones a few times, but always just completely ignored the quest. I've never had or been given the faintest clue of where to go after finding one, so it always seemed worthless. Looking at the quest online, I see that confirmed, so I'm glad I never tried.
@@xera9004 who needs them? Gems aren't difficult to find in Skyrim, especially at higher levels. It isn't worth the effort of completing that stupid quest.
@@mrman2415 Honestly I just like laughing about the idiots that jammed precious gems into their ancestors corpse with an urn five feet away. Also it effects everything you get in chests.
A doctor in Solitude asks his secretary about the next two clients: "This guy, with visible pain on his face, what is he here for?" "Kidney stones" "And that one, with even more pain on his face?" "Barenziah stones"
I don't mind there being no markers, what I mind is how nonsensical the quest is. There are no clues whatsoever for locations of these stones, which would have been a lovely addition if they wanted to go markerless. Maybe having to kinda "race" (well as much as can be done in skyrim) against some other thieves trying to find them and fighting them... it really could have been an interesting quest. But with its current nature, it kinda makes you play everything else first just to find these stones along the way, which leads the Crown being an end game kinda deal. And that is... disappointing to say the least. If they wanted it to be more of an end game reward, boy, they sure failed in implementing it well. I think it would be more interesting as a last unique questline for your thief player after dealing with Mercer. To sorta give more of a hurrah to becoming Guild Master. I uh, obviously thought about this a lot.
Unfortunately Bethesda long ago decided that having a robust writing staff for RPGs was unnecessary, so we haven't had quests like that since Morrowind where you would get a journal entry to the effect of "Follow the road north to Caldera and at the final crossroads leading into town, head west and search the shoreline for a cave behind a waterfall"... you know... RPG stuff to get you organically exploring an RPG world. Now we just mindlessly follow compass markers or, in the case of the Barenziah stones, look it all up on the wiki in the pursuit of some meaningless achievement.
You are very correct. There should be some in-game literature or clues to their whereabouts. It should not be to scour the entire goddamn subcontinent.
could have been such a good quest. like maybe if you either find one or ask vex about hidden treasures in the world she directs you to the location of a thief who was tracking them all down. you go and find the thief at the end of a radiant location(gotta keep it skyrim) and maybe they were taken prisoner by whoever was there bc they were also trying to track down all the stones, at which point they hand you their findings on all the locations like "fuck this shit imma steal from someone else". their findings consist of maybe 10 confirmed locations(like lords palaces and faction hqs), 10 hidden in riddles(like the ones in pinewatch or fellglow keep) and the location of the other 4 could be on another thief(maybe they find the stones on their own if you leave them to it for a while). coulda been a whole ass treasure hunt but bethesda wanted an aimless collectathon. and also the crown shouldnt just be in any old ruin, it should be in a special made tomb that doesnt even pop up until you get all the stones and stick them in a pedestal somewhere. the tomb itself should be lined with gold and riches. still gotta keep it skyrim so there will be draugr but they could be decked out with golden armour and drop like 800 gold each when they die, so the player really feels like they hit the motherload. when you get to the end the ghost of barenziah appears like "whats up mortal i see you want to restore my crown, here you go. now you have a couple of options. keep the restored crown here and ill let you live here[cool player home], give it to the thieves guild[adjusted prowlers profit which means you can sell stolen stuff to fences for x*speech skill/10], or keep it as a wearable item[3% chance that any container you open has a spare 1000 septims in it]" TL;DR: quest bad, coulda been cool treasure hunt with a motherload of gold at the end
done it atleast thrice, always worth it if you use a guide. the buff you get at the end makes it so almost all containers in the game spawn with a few gems. every fucking empty urn in the province suddenly have a few precious gems in them.
Its great if you want to have tons of money quickly or hate lugging around heavy and expensive items to merchants. At higher levels you're pretty much guaranteed to get flawless gems, so much so you can easily get several thousands worth of gems from a Nordic tomb, depending on how large and expansive it is.
This quest is possibly the worst sidequest out of all rpgs for two reasons. You have to find 24 stones that are scattered throughout the world with no map marker or hints at their location with some being missable and the other being that the reward is just a passive that increases your chances to find actual gems as loot from enemies and containers. smh That's right. You don't even get the crown for yourself. Just the passive.
I forgot this quest existed because there wasn't even an ounce of me that thought I'd ever finish it for even a second. These cryptic quests are only fun if you get some kind of clues or leads but if you ask me to just aimlessly look around fucking forget about it.
There's nothing "Aimless" about them. They're in either the Jarl's palace, or the next richest guy's house in every major city, or scattered in the boss room or boss's bedroom of every major quest line. They're just a PITA because a lot of them are quest-locked in that regard.
@@twiggypie2314 But the game doesn't tell you that so yes it is aimless. If the game told you where they were or gave you clues then it wouldn't be. I didn't say there was no pattern to them, just that the game doesn't tell you squat.
I could honestly tolerate the lack of quest markers if there were actual hints given to you around the game, stuff like notes that guide you in the general direction or heck even if you could ask other npcs besides Vex about them. Having quest markers kinda defeats the challenge of the quest imho. Maybe even a radiant quest similar to how the greybeards can guide you to words of power. Like you talk to Vex and she says something like "I've heard of another Stone of Barenzia in Whiterun." It would at least narrow it down... Not sure how to solve the Stones that can be permanently missed though.
in earlier versions you could permanently miss them. like the one in the thalmor embassy. now that stone is inside the cave conecting with the embassy, so if you miss it, you can go back
I gave up long ago, and get all 24 (actually 23, see below) of the damn stones in the Skyrim Cheat Room. There are 24 there, but actually to get the quest started you need to find at least one "unusual stone" and take it to Vex for appraisal, then once the real name "Stone of Barenziah" comes up, go get the other 23 you need. I can also get the Crown of Barenziah in the cheat room, but for some reason Vex won't recognize it... so I have to go through the cave to find it (not too hard). There are also guides on CZcams listing all stone locations, if you'd rather do it that way.
ah yes, a perfect "thieves guild" "quest" where you never steal the gem but rather find them randomly in stupid dank caves. oh and the times where someone actually "owns" them it isn't considered stealing to take them from their nightstand.
But if someone catches you it is considered stealing despite it displaying "Take." I had to sneak from then on because I took the one from Dragonsreach for the first time and the guards started attacking me
Walter just needs to do a little bump of his own creation and for about 8 hours he will possess the energy of mind to get out there and find those stones one by one.
@@ForwardTu Perhaps you're right, it's been a long time since I've watched BB. I just know bumps are a coke term used to describe a small line for snorting, while b!tches and hotrails are tools used for smoking crystal
A while back I had an idea for a mod that when you entered a cell with one of these stones, or some other quest item it would notify the player that theres a quest item present, and would go away when collected, or stay there on the map marker as like a small colored dot or some shape. Got the ground work for it but ended up running into a lot of weird issues like blackreach putting markers on every cave that lead to it, and having the exits of cells always showing the marker, and other kinds of stupid stuff
The Crimson Nirnroot might've messed up Blackreach, no idea what the cells are about (do you mean if you're arrested?). Maybe manually disable it for 2-4 quests and it might work better? I don't know how easy or hard that'd be though.
I modded this quest to show the location and completed it once. The WORST part, is that it breaks the economy. You end up with so many gems spawning in chests, that there aren't enough merchants in the game to sell all of the gems to. I had to put points into speech to get merchants to have more gold, and then ended up with 500k gold at lvl 60. I lost interest in finishing that character because I broke the game by completing that quest. Now I collect them, put them in a chest, and intentionally never finish it. I still have yet to 100% the game or beat the story mode, even after starting 50 some characters over the years.
There are better uses to those gems rather than selling them. Alchemy is way better to provide gold. You can grow some plants for that, some others ingredients cannot be. Good news: you can craft fire, frost, void salts with gems thanks to the atronach forge. Ruby/saphire/amethyst (flawless or not) + normal salt piles (you can find plenty into inns barrels) + soul gem (even low quality ones without a soul in it).
@@deffdefying4803 The point is, by the time you can buy the house, the extra gems you find from the quest reward are just pocket change. You will already be swimming in gold and stuff to sell. I see a lot of people state that the quest is worth doing because the gems you find are good money. They are just overkill at that point.
the first time i came across this quest i immediately opened the map, when i realized that there are no markers to these gems i was like "are you f***ing kidding me?!" good memories!
I like having the prowlers profit, it does make searching dungeon chests more worthwhile to me. The worst part is that merchants in Skyrim have barely any gold even with speech maxed, so selling all of the gems is a real pain in the ass and takes forever
@@HarmonicRex9274 Its cool and all. But the quest becomes quite repetitive. Especially since it allways spawns in one of the first dungeons, whenever you start a new game.
I legitimately completed this quest once when I tried to "100%" the game without looking up locations. My best advice is basically just get the quest early game and ignore it for hundreds of hours of game play, and then maybe, just maybe you will find all 24 without looking them up
I actually enjoied the Nirnroot quest, I started it with the lv1 Necromancer opening in Alternative Life, and the whole mission turned in an infiltration quest in an area where almost everything could kill me. The Best part was that I did not knew Blackreach at the time, so there was also the exploration part.
Quest items don’t have weight. They say they do in the menu, but it doesn’t actually take up inventory space. It’s more symbolic than anything, it would look weird if half the items in the game had weight: 0
No, Elder Scrolls weigh nothing as well. If you try to drop anything from your inventory, and it says “quest items cannot be removed from your inventory” then that item is weightless. You an actually abuse this by deliberately not finishing quests that give you a temporary weapon or armour, it’s just weightless gear for free.
I'm like that with collectables in a few games, it's like if I feel strongly about collecting them all on every run my brain just stores screenshots of where they are as I play the game. Like I know where all 50 golden scarabs are in Ninja Gaiden Black, and that info has been in my head for about 18 years. I kinda wish I could remember more useful stuff that clearly lol.
@@yewtewbstew547 Honestly when it comes to the stones of Barenziah quest I hunted them all down just to complete the flawless amethyst and flawless sapphire quests you get in Riften. They're so hard to find for me so I just grab them all for convenience.
I have gone through and gotten every single achievement in this game, sunk thousands of hours into it, modded it to hell and back. But I still haven't finished this quest
That's not the most bs part of this quest. Some of these stones are hidden behind other quests, and one of them requires you to spend over 10k gold to get it. No, I'm not kidding on that last part. One of the stones is hidden inside the player house in Solitude, which you can only get after going through two different quests. Afterwards you have to buy the stupid place, which is easily the most expensive house in the entire base game. A couple are also hidden inside the main quest, too, meaning that you cannot just look up the locations and quickly scoop them all up. It's honestly one of the worst, least interesting, most infuriating quests in the game. However, that's not the worst part. The worst part is that you cannot ditch the stones. They stay in your inventory until the quest is completed, and DO NOT STACK. Each stone is treated as it's own seperate object, so when you start collecting these little pieces of garbage, they VERY quickly clutter up your inventory. You're constantly reminded that you still need to do this stupid thing, and have no escape from them until you finally get it out of the way.
It has the most OP reward in the game, so why would it be easy? Go play the Sims lol. They literally put 1 challenging quest in the game and you whine about it
Tbh idek how I finished the quest, but I somehow did and I didn't even notice. And they stacked for me, so maybe you have to do something to make them stack? Idk...
@@trevordeboer It WOULD be op... if it wasn't so late in the game that you could finish it. By the time that you can afford the player home in Solitude, you don't need the reward. You're actually actively looking around for places to get rid of cash. I finished that quest with over 800k gold in the bank, and nowhere to spend it. And if you're saying the ability to always find gems is invaluable for crafting, I WAS LITERALLY DROWNING IN GEMS BEFORE I FINISHED IT. The quest is needlessly difficult, for a reward that is basically worthless by the time you finish it, all while needlessly cluttering your inventory. And as to your claims that I'm complaining about a game being 'to hard,' I beat doom eternal on nightmare, and dead cells on 5bc. I don't care if something's too hard. I care if something needlessly wastes my time for nothing to show for it.
Imo the thing is the best way to play the quest is to not actively do it. To just randomly find one while going through a dungeon gives me a little bit of excitement.
I fully expected him to say - "Say my name, Bethesda. Say my name." "You're goddamn right." Crown of Barenziah, a guild artifact that is practically worthless considering the effort needed to find the stones, but the reward for doing so is like getting the reward for killing a giant during a bounty. Completely underwhelming. Here is a hundred gold for killing a hulking monstrosity that is easily five times your height, and twenty times your weight, which will allow you to buy maybe ten sweetrolls, if your lucky. One giant, bounty a hundred gold. Ten bandits, bounty a hundred gold. Wow. Shows the value that these Jarls put on their people. Yeah, I'm speaking in Ben Stein's voice. Completely underwhelmed.
Uh, the reward for finding all 24 stones is that you now find a gem almost guaranteed in several types of containers. Every draugr crypt suddenly becomes a 10,000 gold treasure yield.
Don't forget 20,000 gold for killing the Emperor and the fact a goddamned house that's about the size of an apartment costs 5000 gold before furnishings. And you have to kill a dragon and go into a dangerous ruin in search of a mythical stone in order to even be eligible to buy it.
@@LibraritheWizardOfficial Prowler's profit. By far the most OP passive effect in the game. You could fill a basement with gemstones in a day of play. I can't imagine how anyone would think that's a weak reward! It was always the first thing I set out to do.
That happened to me as well. And when I wanted to finish the quest I... couldn't remember where exactly did I get those. So I searched every place once more, it was such a pain
That's an issue with Bethesda, not inherently the objective itself. If the stones were a quest in morrowind, or even oblivion, you could've asked around about them to all the random NPCs and they would've given hints to their locations, and the stones themselves would've been worth the hunt because (barring any alchemy cheese) the economy was balanced better, and the dungeon diving not only would get you the stone, but some loot as well. In Skyrim, the economy is fucked. No matter what you do, how you do it, you end up a fat cat with infinite wealth and nothing to spend it on because your hand-crafted and enchanted gear will forever be better than what you can find in a store. Even if you swear off the crafting triangle (Blacksmithing, Enchanting, Alchemy) that only delays the breakage of the games balance by a bit. By level 10 I'm already strong enough to bonk literally every major boss in the game, and all I've got is this mismatched armor set and a daedric artifact (Likely either Dawnbreaker, or Molag's mace, pair that with Spellbreaker if I feel like it). All upping the difficulty does is make the foes a damage sponge, which isn't fun. But, that's why mods exist I guess.
@@antonizajkowski9698 Well, good economy mods are kind of subjective. It's all about preference to how "difficult" you want it to be. Just gotta experiment and find what's good in your opinion. I personally don't use any economy mods. Gold/Septim weight I do use though.
I started the requiem mod and it’s actually fixed a lot of those issues for me. It might be a bit too masochistic for some players but I found it ok. I when I started the game I spent a lot of time using my items and shouts to find ways to beat enemies I normally should not be able to beat. Dragons become an insurmountable force in the early game, so you end up looking into crafting strong poisons to help you fight. Then that leads you heading to the college to level up alchemy, then hunting for daedra hearts to make strong enough poisons to hurt a dragon. In order to make those poisons I needed enchantments so I leveled conjuring to max and hunted giants and mammoths to fill up grand soul gems. This also gave me some pretty strong summons to make the process of fighting daedra easier, because in Requiem they are probably the strongest humanoid enemies in the game. After doing all this I was finally able to kill that second dragon with Delphine and move onto the thalmor embassy quest, which I only really did because I couldn’t get close to the ebony mines at the orc camp without triggering the quest (and it would crash my game if I wasn’t doing it). Overall, felt more RPGish than normal Skyrim, and it took a long time for my to build the strength to withstand hits from dragons and the like. Giants still one shot though, even at level 50.
Mods can change all of that. I am a level 45 mage in my current play through with completely busted gear that's all double enchanted and I'm still getting clapped by lots of enemies.
Ah yes the barenziah stones. I sure hope none of them can be permanently missed and completely screw the quest
Which ones do that? I know that the one in the Thalmor Embassy used to be inaccessible if you didn't get it during Diplomatic Immunity.
@@Lorekeeper72 Windhelm. The murder quest actually has a hidden timer that starts when you firsts enter the city and if you don't finish it you can't buy the house which locks you out of one of the stones.
@@Lorekeeper72 I found out that if you summon arvack/daedric horse on the other side of the fence you can get back in
@@Majvfb na bro windhelm aint got no stones, its the house in solidute the 25K house
@@Majvfb also, if your game for that quest bugged out. You can just start by getting in to hijerm and itll start. After that DONT TALK TO THE STEWARD. Talk to the wizard
The moment I always dread is looting everything in a chest and hearing "A NEW HAND TOUCHES THE BEACON"
PTSD
I actually really like that quest and the reward, the stones were far worse especially the reward being completely useless
I liked the beacon quest it was simple and got a pretty good sword at the end
Its not entirely bad, its just the guy u have to kill at the end of the chambers is kinda annoying and got a fucking soul that fights after he dies so its really annoying
That quest is awesome IMO
In earlier versions of the game, the stones weren't even anchored to their spawn points. They could be knocked around the room by effects such as your shouts. So if you were running through a dungeon but unaware that a stone was hidden there, and if you were using one of the game's foremost combat mechanics, there was a good chance that you might accidentally send the stone flying into some obscure corner without even realizing it.
Ever accidentally clipped one of the stones through a wall? I do not recommend.
I forgot about that 😅
That's when you right click to use your Witcher Senses to find it
What are you talking about? The game's foremost mechanic is stealth archery.
The most important combat mechanic is stealth archery not shouts
When you have to buy the most expensive house in the game to finish the quest
Can you break in?
The one you can get for free?
@@xera9004 still need the money to be able to buy it, plus you need to be fast, I've tried numerous times and haven't done that.
Which house
@@josilynmccollum4230 solitude one
the stones should’ve raised stats
Maybe thief related stats. Permanent buffs are way better than any gold you can -earn- steal.
If they raised ANY stats by even a single point it would’ve been better. Or give you a skill point to make you more interested in looking for them.
Or at least gave you money or something.
Ayy its best girl mox
@@Peglegkickboxer they do give you money, by making you find more gems in containers when the quest is completed. The problem is they give you money at the stage you don’t need money anymore, because among other reasons, you have to buy the most expensive house in the game to get one of them.
The problem...is that it could have been a good quest.....Look up rumors in cities that say where you find a stone, receive them as quest rewards, radiant thief quests that let you rob an owner of the stone, so many different ways to make it good.....instead we had this......
That's actually really creative man!
So creative!
There's got to be some weird Bethesda rule that every one of their games needs one terribly shitty quest like this to make the others come up smelling like roses or just be a point of infamy and talk
It just works
My thought exactly! The fact that *isn't* how the quest is done is fucking baffling
I still have flash backs “ A NEW HAND TOUCHES THE BEACON”
This
what’s the hate with that quest!? i found it kind of fun
@@ryanbowman8708 I personally don’t hate it either, but a lot of people don’t like that it just starts speaking without you doing anything, and that you can’t really get rid of it
The thing that bothers me the most about this quest is not that there are no markers telling you each stone location, but that when you find a stone, there’s no unique identifier or parentheses next to the stone telling where you found it
The thing that bothered me most is the stones don't stack and they have weight. I absolutely believe this was a troll quest.
@@juicybiscuit527 pretty sure it was confirmed too be on twitter somewhere
That's a good idea for a mod.
@@juicybiscuit527 iirc they don't have weight because they are quest items
@@TheManeymonquest items show weight but they indeed don't actually stack up with your current load - tired of seeing this misconception 12 years after the initial release
All locations of the Stones of Barenziah:
Proudspire Manor (Solitude Player Home Master Bedroom)
Blue Palace (In Jarl Elisif's quarters)
Reeking Cave (Beneath the Thalmor Embassy)
Dainty Sload (Captain's quarters, docked near Solitude)
College of Winterhold (Arch-Mage's Quarters)
Yngvild (North of Winterhold's coast, in the bedroom behind the throne room)
Hob's Fall Cave (Winterhold, in the necromancer's sleeping area)
Treasury House (Markarth, on a nightstand in the Master Bedroom)
Understone Keep (Locked side room of the Dwemer Museum)
Dead Crone Rock (on a makeshift altar)
Jorrvaskr (Kodlak's bedroom)
Whiterun Hall of the Dead (In one of the crypt alcoves)
Dragonsreach (Jarl's Bedroom)
Rannveig's Fast (Table in the room with Sild the Warlock)
Fellglow Keep (workroom at the top of the front foyer)
House of Clan Shatter-Shield (Windhelm, in a bedroom)
Palace of Kings (In Wuunferth's quarters, on a table)
Stony Creek Cave (In the Bandit Wizard's cavern)
Ansilvund (Near Fjori's ghost in the burial chambers)
Sunderstone Gorge (On the altar in front of the Word Wall)
Dark Brotherhood Sanctuary (On the dresser in Astrid's room)
Pinewatch (In a locked treasure room)
Mistveil Keep (Beside the Jarl's bed)
Black-Briar Lodge (Upstairs Master Bedroom)
The crown is in Tovald's Crossing, accessed through Tovald's Cave southwest of Riften.
Thanks for this man
I love u
You are a godsend
Good man this,he knows the pain.
You are a good person💋
Walt: "How many stones are there in this game?"
Vex: "Stendar's mercy, Walt..! They're minerals."
best comment
jesus christ mary
@@joshuagraham2843 *Marie
Stendarr*
I don't get it - stones ARE minerals?!
I actually found the crimson nirnroot quest to be quite easy. Not a walk in the park, but a lot easier than the stones of barenziah quest.
Well, yeah. They’re just in black reach. Even if it takes you six hours, it’s only one location. And also blackreach is probably the coolest location in the game so it goes by quick
I've completed the crimson nirnroot quest several times. The barenziah stones though... I've never done it
@@Assault_Butter_Knife same bro, same
Yeah it always intimidated me, but the last time i played i decided to do it. It was actually quite fun because it encouraged me to explore more of black reach. Only took like an hour too. Not only are they all in blackreach, but the game literally tells you to look around the water which immediately eliminates a lot of possible surface area
@@dustinhatfield8373 I just ran around and listened for nirnroot noises
This is why the marker mod for this quest remains one of the most popular
To be honest, I didn't even try to finish the quest without the mod, all those years ago when Skyrim was still a new game and I was playing it through for the first time. I might have got something like a dozen stones before I looked for a mod. Every player comes across some of them, whether they wanted or not. It's such an awful quest. Like someone else said, it coud have been an awesome quest tied to a whole bunch of other random quests, but Bethesda decided to do lazy todds and the rest is history best forgotten.
*Ten Years Later* and I still refuse to do this quest.
Picked up one once. In my first play thru.
Never have touched the things again
Still refuse to do Thieves guild quests
Even the reward is shit, unfortunately there is no reason to do this quest
same here lol
@@jab9109 Yeah the reward is pretty broken tbh lol. You literally get unlimited cash essentially. My main character has more flawless diamonds than I could ever actually sell.
The quest would be infinitely better if it was just "You can sell the stones for increasing amounts of gold, and you get a bonus for getting them all", so you at least get *something* for finding some of the damn things.
The excuse of "even though these are gems from a royal crown, no one wants to buy them unless you have the whole set" is absolutely nonsensical.
Ikr! That's like someone refusing to catch Suicune cuz it doesn't already come together with Entei and Raikou.
It's because supposedly they're anchors for an enchantment, without the whole set you have an active carved soulgem that you have no idea what it will do if triggered, in actuality the gems power a minor feather enchantment that removes 90% of the weight from the ugly solid gold crown.
If they were worthless why do rich nobels sleep next to them???
not to mention that the added bonus of getting extra jewels in random chests is basically worthless by the time you've actually completed this quest.
@@TheSucidalpanda
You're a rich noble in Skyrim, you have all the money you'll ever need... but it's Skyrim within a month you've done everything and now you have nothing better to do than sleep next to a glowing floating gem that may or may not kill you because that's the only thing that makes you feel alive anymore.
We can all be Nezeem who gets to annoy a mercenary until they finally kill him, we don't get that kind of high!
Hell, 120 nirnroot in Oblivion was a cakewalk in comparison to these 24 bastard stones. Of course, one of them is usually close to a certain beacon.
To be fair, atleast with the nirn root they make a sound when you get within a certain radius of them. Which makes finding them easy. Haven't found one of these stones yet but I don't think they do the same thing. And since I haven't found one yet even by accident that kinda tells me how hard these are to find
They're just chilling on benches in hold houses and dungeons.
@@williamlevy6964 never noticed them then if that’s where they are .3.
@@grimreaper63151 I found them all on an old run through. Found like seven on my current run
They also are all right next to water, greatly reducing the places they might be, just walk along the coast and rivers and you will find plenty.
An added problem with this quest is that the reward effect comes far too late to be useful, I think. By the time you complete this quest, there is probably nothing left you really need to spend money on, and you probably have a stockpile of at least a few hundred thousand gold. At that point, finding gems in every chest just creates a new way to clog up your inventory list.
But the gems, the beautiful gems to horde in my 50 septum house in whiterun
Exactly
@goggles789 you need at least 25k for Proudspire which has a gem inside, if you have 25k in the early game then you don't need more gems
money is basically worthless in the elder scrolls games because you find ancient loot so powerful you may as well be a gundam in the first dungeon you walk into all the time
@goggles789
I tried to focus on it as my very first quest, using the marker mod and internet guides to maximize efficiency.
Even then, the quest is so massive and related to so many other quests and requirements (I had to buy the most expensive house in the game, seriously wtf?) that by the time i got the crown I was at level 38, had full Dragonbone armor and weapons and the most expensive house in the game.
I use a mod where you can spend flawless gems to fortify enchantments, so the prowlers blessing really helps in that regard, but in vanilla i wouldn't consider the reward to be worth the trouble.
Not to mention doing this quest organically instead of just chasing after them specifically gives you the reward in the absolute endgame when it's almost worthless.
End Game of the Main campaing. You still have 3 DLCs + the creation club content (if You have any)
@@xshadowwidness At that point finding more valuables is kind of pointless anyway.
@@poslednisoud oh yeah.... Cause there is not nothing more to Buy... It's not like You still have the DLCs or something like that
@@xshadowwidness why are you defending something that's objectively useless? by the time you do enough content to happen upon all of the stones you already have more gold than you could ever use. and get this, the stones of barenziah quest is part of the base game. before the dlc's existed. so your point is even more irrelevant.
it's not bad on its own. but the way the economy is in skyrim, its useless. if smithing and alchemy items didnt sell for so much, and if vendors didnt run out of gold from selling them one decent item, it would be really cool.
@@Purriah cause i love the Game and complaining of something That is not Bad, when there are better options like "Secrets in the roots", "The lady of whispers's quest" the ones who call it useless are the ones who don't know how to explote it. Merchants can increase their inventory if you finance them. Khajite caravans have a lot of Gold, not to mention fences It should also not be added that gems are necessary to create objects Like the arcane spiders for example.
Besides i did a quick research just to remind me, and You don't Even have to finish the Main campaing yo get all stones, just need to finish Whiterun Arc and start the Firts mission of every faction, except those of the civil war
I like the idea that, to make up for every other quest being map-markered to all get-out, they'd have one, traditional, map-markerless quest. It's like Morrowind, again, yeah? Except there are no clues, no interesting interactions, nothing. You just randomly bump into them and take them or look them all up. There was so much potential here!
So they are like the Dragon Priest Masks hidden quest. Except there are no clues, no interesting locations, they all have weight, some stack but some don't, you can't place them in a chest, have a needlessly huge amount (24 for fuck sake), and are basically useless until you get the full set.
Fuck you Vex, you can go look for these by yourself, ill rather fight some op dragon priests.
This is definitely one of the quests of all time
If you just go to Tovald's Cave during the quest, no matter how many stones you have, you can just use a dinner plate to no clip through the rocks and pick up the Crown of Barenziah. It advances the quest to end and you get the reward, easy clap.
Actually don't need the quest to be active to do it, I walked in at level 12 and got the thing. This however breaks the physics on the stones and they'll float by meh.
This sounds awfully alot like a certain whispering blade behind a locked door in the cellar if a large building.
No cap, that things kinda useless.
Up
@@Zaws21 up, down, down, left, right, left, right, b,a,b,a, start
@@blazermettro2059 swear its the best sword in the game
You don't need to find all 24. Pro-tip; tap the button as fast as you can when picking up a stone.
There's a slight delay in the game when you select "pick up" and when you actually pick up the stone. If you tap it fast enough, the game registers you picking up 2 or even 3 stones instead of 1
Imma try that and come back.
@@captainmoostache5578 be sure to have spoken to Vex after finding the first stone, though. The counter doesn't start until the name changes from "mysterious gem" to "stone of barenziah"
I'm not sure if it works with either name, but I'm hedging my bets and telling you to speak to Vex as soon as possible
@@Elderrion Noted. I wasn't going to the Theives Guild until after a while so it's good that you told me now.
@@captainmoostache5578 I'm like 90% sure it doesn't matter, but I'm 100% sure it works once the name changes because you get two or three quest update notifications when you do
M A G I C
You know, they could have an unofficial patch quest(s) where after a certain amount of time after you find the first stone, a courier finds you and gives you a letter which would say a rumor where another stone is located, show a new location on the map, and it could be from an anonymous source. I would much prefer that than having to just hope I come across one without looking it up.
The irony is that I played the game so much that i found the majority of the stones organically through doing missions and exploring. Only had to look up the location for like 2 of them when I wanted to complete the mission.
One of the developers hated players but couldn’t find a way to legally insult/punish them. So he came up with this quest…
Let me guess someone stole your sweetroll
Thats just bethesda in general.
@@parzy5220 no lollygagging.
Well, the reward will make you infinitely rich. Best quest. 👍
@@parzy5220 when I hear this from gaurds I can see all my childhood for more than 15mins and I get depression 💀 I mean why they put that in the game
And then he moved to Cyrodiil to start a skooma empire.
"Jesse, it's time to cook some Balmora Blue!"
In Bravil, right?
@@Birlibi4 Yup!
But we did cook balmora blue, Mr. StonerWaifu Games.
To anyone doing the quest for a repeat playthrough. start the quest and then go to the cave where you get the crown. Eventually without all 24 stones you'll reach a dead end. But you can actually no clip/large platter through the wall and finish the cave and get the crown of barenziah. Which you can then take to Vex and complete the quest way faster and get your gem power.
What do you mean "large platter" through a wall?
Gem power? Huh? Like a permanent power thingy?
@@Papa_Straight Prowlers profit: Unique buff given from completing the no stone unturned questline and turning it in to Vex at the thieves guild. It gives most dungeon loot containers (Urns and chests) A high % of spawning 1-4 gems of any kind, and of either quality normal/flawless But never "Exquisite sapphires" which is a unique reward from sapphires hidden questline.
@@JJ_SDWR lot of spots you can pick up and shove a plate that you walk into that will let you clip through
@@JJ_SDWR There is a glitch in skyrim that allows you to go through doors and thin walls if you run into them while holding a plate. There's also a glitch that allows you to levitate by holding a bucket.
this one got me lmao. When the 'talk to vex about how shitty the quest is' I was done
The crimson nirnroot quest was quite a pain. Although it did give me an excuse to explore Blackreach and Blackreach is quite a beautiful place.
Plus, a chance to make a duplicate potion is a more substantial reward
@@SonofTiamat I don't think so. The Barenziah Stones quest makes you almost unlimited amounts of money just by its reward, which is a perk.
@@vaalence9043 It's already easy to get rich in Skyrim though
I simply collected the nirnroot that grows near the Exit-Tower and returned every few Days.
That way, I didn't have to bother with the Falmer.
@@vaalence9043 So it does nothing.... I have 3 mods installed just to have a money sink for all the gold you get
This quest could've been a cool Morrowind style markerless quest if there was a book full of riddles or clues to the stones locations that vex could give you.
Edit: imagine if M'aiq the liar gave the riddles, that would be cool
Riddles and or some barely vague enough hints are the best way to handle these kinds of quests in games. Like finding the memories in BOTW requires locating key landmarks in a set of photographs.
or some common theme surrounding the stones, so that you could have an idea of the kind of places to look.
Oh yeah morrowind is unique as its own, take me a whole month to finish the game during 2003 and also get in trouble for almost not finishing homework
lol
Maybe you could've had Vex give you a lead on the ones owned by random people in cities at least. Perhaps she could give you a new lead each time after you do a repeatable thieves guild quest for her. Just something simple like 'I've heard that Jarl Balgruuf is in possession of one of the stones of Barenziah.'
The only thing I can compare it to is the ten Propylon Indices, one of the only items that could be used for fast travel across Vvardenfell, which are placed in seemingly random locations. However, it actually makes sense that they’re hard to find since their function is so obscure. The only people who possess them are Telvanni mages, Daedra worshippers and traders who don’t know their real value. Once you find one, you aren’t given a quest to search for them all, or even the suggestion that there’s more than one.
I don't know much about Barenziah outside of the fact she's been around a long time and I've yet to read her biopgraphies, so I can't comment on what the stones mean in relation to her but...
I feel as though the stones are intentionally a sort of curse/trap thing where you see one and it's immediately enticing and you assume it has value. It's sort of a Mummy's Finger from Daggerfall where you are tricked into something you didn't want through what seemed to be a very favorable and (upon first seeing it and not knowing what it is) important item. Does this make for good gameplay? Not really. It sure is memorable though. I feel if you could at least put quest items into a container you own that would be the safest and most pain free method of dealing with it, or the mavis beacon, or all those damn instruments.
I've read Barenziah's biography and I don't remember any mentions of stones
12 years later and I still haven’t found all of these little fu@#$&*
Can't wait for the follow-up where Walter rolls around on the floor laughing maniacally after finally returning the final stone and realizing the reward really wasn't worth it at all.
It's just a shitty crown, it doesn't even look good
I know it isn't worth it at all. Why the fuck would they do that to us.
It's especially fun that the stones in Fellglow and Pinewatch are bugged and sometimes don't spawn, so you end up permanently incapable of getting more than 22 stones
...But you can always "reload" the cell until you can pick the stones.
Just be sure to have a save before going to those locations and you will be golden.
If you repeatedly press pick up fast enough, one stone can become 2-3 or more, so you can have more than enough.
It's a bug and it works.
Talk to vex first though.
I get those stones first
Oh shit, really? That hasn't happened in any of my playthroughs, but I wouldn't be surprised if it did
@@Silembr It's sporadic. Sometimes they spawn just fine. I think it's about time somehow, but I don't know the details; I typically play for hundreds of hours before I get to this quest.
it's been 11 years and I've still never finished this quest
The glitch on Xbox 360 where you could click A very fast and get multiple stones from 1 was very nice. The effect is really noticeable too. Every dungeon and cave you acquire a lot more precious stones
Don't talk to her until _after_ you've got them all, otherwise they will stop stacking in your inventory and be annoying to scroll past every time.
Thanks, Bethesda, "Triple A" game studio.
Yes. Can confirm.
better suggestion: never pick one of them up :D
@@boldCactuslad But they are shiny :((
yeah that's why I never talk to her about em anymore so fuckin annoying
It just works
And when the game first released it was possible to permanently miss at least one of them.
Where?
@@Thomas.c4647 the one in the thalmor ambassy if you didn't pick it up during diplomatic immunity. The one in Windhelm's murderer house too
@@nainorotodox oh yeah I remember the first one now. I think they moved it to a different location some time later.
plus the one in the pre destruction db base
Bethesda games at release are for those who want to play a buggy, broken mess. Thankfully, the studio has decided to keep releasing the game for nearly 11 years now. Good thing they're not resting on their laurels.
The stones' quest was actually ingenious. There's scattered around Skyrim, but you'll mainly find them during questlines. It rewards you for playing the game to completion and getting to know the world.
If I played long enough to find every stone through pure exploration my beard would have grown past my sack by the time I was done.
Bruh I just picked up this stone last night and now seeing this you just saved me from a headache. Because I was thinking of doing the quest today
I've gotten these stones a few times, but always just completely ignored the quest. I've never had or been given the faintest clue of where to go after finding one, so it always seemed worthless. Looking at the quest online, I see that confirmed, so I'm glad I never tried.
There's basically no reason to do this quest with our using the wiki to walk you thru it, which means there's basically no reason to do this quest
Yea, who wants to find diamonds inside dragur instead of 6 gold
@@xera9004 who needs them? Gems aren't difficult to find in Skyrim, especially at higher levels. It isn't worth the effort of completing that stupid quest.
@@mrman2415 Honestly I just like laughing about the idiots that jammed precious gems into their ancestors corpse with an urn five feet away. Also it effects everything you get in chests.
"They're not stones, they're Minerals!"
A doctor in Solitude asks his secretary about the next two clients:
"This guy, with visible pain on his face, what is he here for?"
"Kidney stones"
"And that one, with even more pain on his face?"
"Barenziah stones"
I don't mind there being no markers, what I mind is how nonsensical the quest is. There are no clues whatsoever for locations of these stones, which would have been a lovely addition if they wanted to go markerless. Maybe having to kinda "race" (well as much as can be done in skyrim) against some other thieves trying to find them and fighting them... it really could have been an interesting quest.
But with its current nature, it kinda makes you play everything else first just to find these stones along the way, which leads the Crown being an end game kinda deal. And that is... disappointing to say the least. If they wanted it to be more of an end game reward, boy, they sure failed in implementing it well.
I think it would be more interesting as a last unique questline for your thief player after dealing with Mercer. To sorta give more of a hurrah to becoming Guild Master.
I uh, obviously thought about this a lot.
Unfortunately Bethesda long ago decided that having a robust writing staff for RPGs was unnecessary, so we haven't had quests like that since Morrowind where you would get a journal entry to the effect of "Follow the road north to Caldera and at the final crossroads leading into town, head west and search the shoreline for a cave behind a waterfall"... you know... RPG stuff to get you organically exploring an RPG world.
Now we just mindlessly follow compass markers or, in the case of the Barenziah stones, look it all up on the wiki in the pursuit of some meaningless achievement.
You are very correct. There should be some in-game literature or clues to their whereabouts. It should not be to scour the entire goddamn subcontinent.
i hate that you have to buy Proudspire Manor to find all of the stones, soo many people could search the entire map without finding the last stone
If you at least could wear the damn crown in the end but nooo
could have been such a good quest. like maybe if you either find one or ask vex about hidden treasures in the world she directs you to the location of a thief who was tracking them all down. you go and find the thief at the end of a radiant location(gotta keep it skyrim) and maybe they were taken prisoner by whoever was there bc they were also trying to track down all the stones, at which point they hand you their findings on all the locations like "fuck this shit imma steal from someone else". their findings consist of maybe 10 confirmed locations(like lords palaces and faction hqs), 10 hidden in riddles(like the ones in pinewatch or fellglow keep) and the location of the other 4 could be on another thief(maybe they find the stones on their own if you leave them to it for a while). coulda been a whole ass treasure hunt but bethesda wanted an aimless collectathon. and also the crown shouldnt just be in any old ruin, it should be in a special made tomb that doesnt even pop up until you get all the stones and stick them in a pedestal somewhere. the tomb itself should be lined with gold and riches. still gotta keep it skyrim so there will be draugr but they could be decked out with golden armour and drop like 800 gold each when they die, so the player really feels like they hit the motherload. when you get to the end the ghost of barenziah appears like "whats up mortal i see you want to restore my crown, here you go. now you have a couple of options. keep the restored crown here and ill let you live here[cool player home], give it to the thieves guild[adjusted prowlers profit which means you can sell stolen stuff to fences for x*speech skill/10], or keep it as a wearable item[3% chance that any container you open has a spare 1000 septims in it]"
TL;DR: quest bad, coulda been cool treasure hunt with a motherload of gold at the end
“A NEW HAND TOUCHES THE BEACON”
“No no no not now. Not now NOT NOW!”
“A new hand touches the beacon!”
No the real one is. Touching the beacon
I never even tried to do this quest so I'm glad I never knew how awful it was haha
done it atleast thrice, always worth it if you use a guide. the buff you get at the end makes it so almost all containers in the game spawn with a few gems. every fucking empty urn in the province suddenly have a few precious gems in them.
Its great if you want to have tons of money quickly or hate lugging around heavy and expensive items to merchants. At higher levels you're pretty much guaranteed to get flawless gems, so much so you can easily get several thousands worth of gems from a Nordic tomb, depending on how large and expansive it is.
@@joser9237 And that's why it's totally pointless D:
@@_Colie he's saying after you get done not when you're high level
@@dakodareid3807 why are you repeating his comment?
This quest is possibly the worst sidequest out of all rpgs for two reasons. You have to find 24 stones that are scattered throughout the world with no map marker or hints at their location with some being missable and the other being that the reward is just a passive that increases your chances to find actual gems as loot from enemies and containers. smh
That's right. You don't even get the crown for yourself. Just the passive.
The korok seed quest in breath of the wild is 4× long if you want to 100% it, and even that managed to not be as terrible as these stones
I was so mad when I found out you couldn't get to keep the crown
@@misterghoul9457 24 /= to 900. that is 36 times longer
@@tylerbarrett2492 that just proves my point more
@@misterghoul9457 Did you mean it takes you 4 times as much time to finish it?
that and "a new hand touches the beacon" are the two times that give every player anxiety
I forgot this quest existed because there wasn't even an ounce of me that thought I'd ever finish it for even a second. These cryptic quests are only fun if you get some kind of clues or leads but if you ask me to just aimlessly look around fucking forget about it.
There's nothing "Aimless" about them. They're in either the Jarl's palace, or the next richest guy's house in every major city, or scattered in the boss room or boss's bedroom of every major quest line. They're just a PITA because a lot of them are quest-locked in that regard.
@@twiggypie2314 But the game doesn't tell you that so yes it is aimless. If the game told you where they were or gave you clues then it wouldn't be. I didn't say there was no pattern to them, just that the game doesn't tell you squat.
One of them counted as stolen item. I paid off my debt to a guard and my stone was confiscated. Started a new campaign lmao
That's pretty much all of them found inside cities, they are counted as stolen property even if the prompt said "Take" instead of "Steal".
Was it not in the Evidence chest in the jail?
@@MMallon425 they don't know about the evidence chest lol
You know....you can get it back right?
A NEW HAND TOUCHES THE BEACON!!!!!
"A NEW HAND TOUCHES THE BEACON"
The crying killed me faster than I killed myself when starting this quest.
Fun fact: the crying is from this ancient animation from the glory days of flash czcams.com/video/e37T0mQntis/video.html
I could honestly tolerate the lack of quest markers if there were actual hints given to you around the game, stuff like notes that guide you in the general direction or heck even if you could ask other npcs besides Vex about them. Having quest markers kinda defeats the challenge of the quest imho. Maybe even a radiant quest similar to how the greybeards can guide you to words of power. Like you talk to Vex and she says something like "I've heard of another Stone of Barenzia in Whiterun." It would at least narrow it down... Not sure how to solve the Stones that can be permanently missed though.
If you miss them have them in some random npc's house like they found them.
in earlier versions you could permanently miss them. like the one in the thalmor embassy. now that stone is inside the cave conecting with the embassy, so if you miss it, you can go back
I gave up long ago, and get all 24 (actually 23, see below) of the damn stones in the Skyrim Cheat Room. There are 24 there, but actually to get the quest started you need to find at least one "unusual stone" and take it to Vex for appraisal, then once the real name "Stone of Barenziah" comes up, go get the other 23 you need. I can also get the Crown of Barenziah in the cheat room, but for some reason Vex won't recognize it... so I have to go through the cave to find it (not too hard). There are also guides on CZcams listing all stone locations, if you'd rather do it that way.
well you can still use the bugs to get them
they wont fix them anytime soon
Its basically a "crowdfunding" quest designed to get people to engage online and collectively solve it.
"A new hand touches the beacon" all of those favorite quotes we all enjoy and love indeed yes❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤😎👍❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤!
y is this so good for no reason
ah yes, a perfect "thieves guild" "quest" where you never steal the gem but rather find them randomly in stupid dank caves.
oh and the times where someone actually "owns" them it isn't considered stealing to take them from their nightstand.
oblivion thieves guild was better
@@Lousysuperior i wouldn't know. Only played it for a few hours. Couldn't get it to run stabile on my rig. But then again, that was years ago.
But if someone catches you it is considered stealing despite it displaying "Take." I had to sneak from then on because I took the one from Dragonsreach for the first time and the guards started attacking me
@@fairypotater7476 only for some.
i've taken one directly in front of its "owner" with no consequence whatsoever.
@@Softpaw1996 That's really odd. I'm not doing that quest ever again but thanks for letting me know lol
Honestly no idea how this quest is possible to do without a guide or playing for hundreds of hours.
A new hand touches the beacon
The first time you play Skyrim: 😃 Cool, another quest!
Every time after: *gasp!* Mustn't touch! Mustn't touch!
Just download the mod that adds quest markers for them
@@XZ1. Still not worth it
@@SonofTiamat I like collecting stuff so I guess it's not for everyone
@@XZ1. I only like collecting when it's fun. This quest is a pain in the a.ss
@@SonofTiamat but shiny stone!!!!
Walter just needs to do a little bump of his own creation and for about 8 hours he will possess the energy of mind to get out there and find those stones one by one.
Pretty sure bumps aren't what you do with crystal, more like he be hot-railin that shit out of a mammoth tusk
@@seanmadson8524 It was a reference to breaking bad. Tuco did crystal bumps all the time. Even Jesse did bumps every now and then.
@@ForwardTu Perhaps you're right, it's been a long time since I've watched BB. I just know bumps are a coke term used to describe a small line for snorting, while b!tches and hotrails are tools used for smoking crystal
A while back I had an idea for a mod that when you entered a cell with one of these stones, or some other quest item it would notify the player that theres a quest item present, and would go away when collected, or stay there on the map marker as like a small colored dot or some shape. Got the ground work for it but ended up running into a lot of weird issues like blackreach putting markers on every cave that lead to it, and having the exits of cells always showing the marker, and other kinds of stupid stuff
You do know there is already a mod that adds quest markers to all stones?
@@khymaaren yea I know but they are always there, all 19 of them. It's a bit too much, I wanted something more immersive
The Crimson Nirnroot might've messed up Blackreach, no idea what the cells are about (do you mean if you're arrested?). Maybe manually disable it for 2-4 quests and it might work better? I don't know how easy or hard that'd be though.
I modded this quest to show the location and completed it once.
The WORST part, is that it breaks the economy. You end up with so many gems spawning in chests, that there aren't enough merchants in the game to sell all of the gems to. I had to put points into speech to get merchants to have more gold, and then ended up with 500k gold at lvl 60.
I lost interest in finishing that character because I broke the game by completing that quest. Now I collect them, put them in a chest, and intentionally never finish it.
I still have yet to 100% the game or beat the story mode, even after starting 50 some characters over the years.
The economy should already be broken by the time you finish the quest. One of the stones requires 25000 gold to get.
@@tadferd4340 if it's because it's in a house, it's reasonable to ask for 25k septims. you are buying a house, after all.
There are better uses to those gems rather than selling them.
Alchemy is way better to provide gold.
You can grow some plants for that, some others ingredients cannot be.
Good news: you can craft fire, frost, void salts with gems thanks to the atronach forge.
Ruby/saphire/amethyst (flawless or not) + normal salt piles (you can find plenty into inns barrels) + soul gem (even low quality ones without a soul in it).
@@deffdefying4803 The point is, by the time you can buy the house, the extra gems you find from the quest reward are just pocket change. You will already be swimming in gold and stuff to sell.
I see a lot of people state that the quest is worth doing because the gems you find are good money. They are just overkill at that point.
you can get your blacksmithing up pretty quick by using the gems, don't have to sell all of them
the first time i came across this quest i immediately opened the map,
when i realized that there are no markers to these gems i was like "are you f***ing kidding me?!"
good memories!
I like having the prowlers profit, it does make searching dungeon chests more worthwhile to me. The worst part is that merchants in Skyrim have barely any gold even with speech maxed, so selling all of the gems is a real pain in the ass and takes forever
All you need to do is save the game, turn the NPC hostile, and then reload. Their inventory and gold resets
"Worst Quest"?!
My brain:
"ANOTHER HAND HAS TOUCHED THE BEACON!"
Aight but...that one gives you cool sword
@@HarmonicRex9274
Its cool and all.
But the quest becomes quite repetitive.
Especially since it allways spawns in one of the first dungeons, whenever you start a new game.
I wasted so many hours as a kid, trying to find all the flags and collectibles in the first couple of Assassins Creed games...
Those AC2 feathers were such a pain without looking them up.
that and "a new hand touches the beacon"
For God's sake..
THEYRE MINERALS
I legitimately completed this quest once when I tried to "100%" the game without looking up locations. My best advice is basically just get the quest early game and ignore it for hundreds of hours of game play, and then maybe, just maybe you will find all 24 without looking them up
I actually enjoied the Nirnroot quest, I started it with the lv1 Necromancer opening in Alternative Life, and the whole mission turned in an infiltration quest in an area where almost everything could kill me.
The Best part was that I did not knew Blackreach at the time, so there was also the exploration part.
Yeah I unironically liked the nirnroot quests as well, also since Blackreach is a really good looking place as well.
This quest is competing heavily with Meridias Beacon
At least Walter didn't touch the beacon.
Its the fact that they have weight that really makes it a pain.
Quest items don’t have weight. They say they do in the menu, but it doesn’t actually take up inventory space. It’s more symbolic than anything, it would look weird if half the items in the game had weight: 0
@@flatlo But Elder Scrolls actually have weight, don't they?
No, Elder Scrolls weigh nothing as well. If you try to drop anything from your inventory, and it says “quest items cannot be removed from your inventory” then that item is weightless.
You an actually abuse this by deliberately not finishing quests that give you a temporary weapon or armour, it’s just weightless gear for free.
Me over here who does these quests as fun little side quests. I memorized where every stone is just for efficiencies sake.
Oooof
I'm like that with collectables in a few games, it's like if I feel strongly about collecting them all on every run my brain just stores screenshots of where they are as I play the game. Like I know where all 50 golden scarabs are in Ninja Gaiden Black, and that info has been in my head for about 18 years. I kinda wish I could remember more useful stuff that clearly lol.
@@yewtewbstew547 Honestly when it comes to the stones of Barenziah quest I hunted them all down just to complete the flawless amethyst and flawless sapphire quests you get in Riften. They're so hard to find for me so I just grab them all for convenience.
“A new h-“ oh. Stones, yeah yeah same.
The 3 unusual gems vibin in my inventory😂
As a perfectionist this quest hurts me
I have gone through and gotten every single achievement in this game, sunk thousands of hours into it, modded it to hell and back. But I still haven't finished this quest
SAME
There is always, always one stone missing.
Well, it's only really worth it if you want an endless amount of gems or money
I love that Walter’s crying sounds like one of the battle themes.
And at the end, you get a crown you can’t even fucking wear and she gives you a thumbs up and an amulet if I remember rightly
That's not the most bs part of this quest. Some of these stones are hidden behind other quests, and one of them requires you to spend over 10k gold to get it.
No, I'm not kidding on that last part. One of the stones is hidden inside the player house in Solitude, which you can only get after going through two different quests. Afterwards you have to buy the stupid place, which is easily the most expensive house in the entire base game.
A couple are also hidden inside the main quest, too, meaning that you cannot just look up the locations and quickly scoop them all up. It's honestly one of the worst, least interesting, most infuriating quests in the game.
However, that's not the worst part.
The worst part is that you cannot ditch the stones. They stay in your inventory until the quest is completed, and DO NOT STACK. Each stone is treated as it's own seperate object, so when you start collecting these little pieces of garbage, they VERY quickly clutter up your inventory. You're constantly reminded that you still need to do this stupid thing, and have no escape from them until you finally get it out of the way.
It has the most OP reward in the game, so why would it be easy? Go play the Sims lol. They literally put 1 challenging quest in the game and you whine about it
@@trevordeboer An OP yet pointless reward. I make so much money as I'm doing this quest that it is rather pointless.
@@adamvialpando106 true. I'd rather just smith stuff then sell them for profit.
Tbh idek how I finished the quest, but I somehow did and I didn't even notice. And they stacked for me, so maybe you have to do something to make them stack? Idk...
@@trevordeboer It WOULD be op... if it wasn't so late in the game that you could finish it. By the time that you can afford the player home in Solitude, you don't need the reward. You're actually actively looking around for places to get rid of cash. I finished that quest with over 800k gold in the bank, and nowhere to spend it.
And if you're saying the ability to always find gems is invaluable for crafting, I WAS LITERALLY DROWNING IN GEMS BEFORE I FINISHED IT.
The quest is needlessly difficult, for a reward that is basically worthless by the time you finish it, all while needlessly cluttering your inventory.
And as to your claims that I'm complaining about a game being 'to hard,' I beat doom eternal on nightmare, and dead cells on 5bc. I don't care if something's too hard. I care if something needlessly wastes my time for nothing to show for it.
RIP 0.5 inventory capacity
Hank loves that quest
This quest is better than ANOTHER HAND TOUCHES THE BEACON....
Imo the thing is the best way to play the quest is to not actively do it. To just randomly find one while going through a dungeon gives me a little bit of excitement.
I fully expected him to say -
"Say my name, Bethesda. Say my name."
"You're goddamn right."
Crown of Barenziah, a guild artifact that is practically worthless considering the effort needed to find the stones, but the reward for doing so is like getting the reward for killing a giant during a bounty.
Completely underwhelming.
Here is a hundred gold for killing a hulking monstrosity that is easily five times your height, and twenty times your weight, which will allow you to buy maybe ten sweetrolls, if your lucky.
One giant, bounty a hundred gold.
Ten bandits, bounty a hundred gold.
Wow. Shows the value that these Jarls put on their people.
Yeah, I'm speaking in Ben Stein's voice. Completely underwhelmed.
Uh, the reward for finding all 24 stones is that you now find a gem almost guaranteed in several types of containers. Every draugr crypt suddenly becomes a 10,000 gold treasure yield.
Don't forget 20,000 gold for killing the Emperor and the fact a goddamned house that's about the size of an apartment costs 5000 gold before furnishings. And you have to kill a dragon and go into a dangerous ruin in search of a mythical stone in order to even be eligible to buy it.
@@LibraritheWizardOfficial Prowler's profit. By far the most OP passive effect in the game. You could fill a basement with gemstones in a day of play. I can't imagine how anyone would think that's a weak reward! It was always the first thing I set out to do.
"Would you prefer silver?" - Proventus
You've obviously never done the quest lol. It has the best reward in the game by far
that was the greatest acting i've ever seen
The mod where you get a marker for every stone is a necessity
The kind of quest they make both knowing and _expecting_ that everyone will just follow a wiki
And even then it's still just a huge pain
I've essentially memorized their locations at this point.
Big feels with that sad face at the beginning.
Me, trying to keep my inventory and quest list clean.
I never even tried to do this quest, but I ended up collecting about 20 of them just by stumbling across them.
That happened to me as well. And when I wanted to finish the quest I... couldn't remember where exactly did I get those. So I searched every place once more, it was such a pain
That's an issue with Bethesda, not inherently the objective itself. If the stones were a quest in morrowind, or even oblivion, you could've asked around about them to all the random NPCs and they would've given hints to their locations, and the stones themselves would've been worth the hunt because (barring any alchemy cheese) the economy was balanced better, and the dungeon diving not only would get you the stone, but some loot as well.
In Skyrim, the economy is fucked. No matter what you do, how you do it, you end up a fat cat with infinite wealth and nothing to spend it on because your hand-crafted and enchanted gear will forever be better than what you can find in a store. Even if you swear off the crafting triangle (Blacksmithing, Enchanting, Alchemy) that only delays the breakage of the games balance by a bit. By level 10 I'm already strong enough to bonk literally every major boss in the game, and all I've got is this mismatched armor set and a daedric artifact (Likely either Dawnbreaker, or Molag's mace, pair that with Spellbreaker if I feel like it).
All upping the difficulty does is make the foes a damage sponge, which isn't fun. But, that's why mods exist I guess.
Annnnnnd that’s the exact reason I dropped Skyrim and started playing Elden ring. Fixes every problem you just named
Any good mods for the economy?
@@antonizajkowski9698 Well, good economy mods are kind of subjective. It's all about preference to how "difficult" you want it to be. Just gotta experiment and find what's good in your opinion. I personally don't use any economy mods. Gold/Septim weight I do use though.
I started the requiem mod and it’s actually fixed a lot of those issues for me. It might be a bit too masochistic for some players but I found it ok. I when I started the game I spent a lot of time using my items and shouts to find ways to beat enemies I normally should not be able to beat. Dragons become an insurmountable force in the early game, so you end up looking into crafting strong poisons to help you fight. Then that leads you heading to the college to level up alchemy, then hunting for daedra hearts to make strong enough poisons to hurt a dragon. In order to make those poisons I needed enchantments so I leveled conjuring to max and hunted giants and mammoths to fill up grand soul gems. This also gave me some pretty strong summons to make the process of fighting daedra easier, because in Requiem they are probably the strongest humanoid enemies in the game. After doing all this I was finally able to kill that second dragon with Delphine and move onto the thalmor embassy quest, which I only really did because I couldn’t get close to the ebony mines at the orc camp without triggering the quest (and it would crash my game if I wasn’t doing it). Overall, felt more RPGish than normal Skyrim, and it took a long time for my to build the strength to withstand hits from dragons and the like. Giants still one shot though, even at level 50.
Mods can change all of that. I am a level 45 mage in my current play through with completely busted gear that's all double enchanted and I'm still getting clapped by lots of enemies.
ANOTHER HAND TOUCHES THE BEACON........
Oh I was thinking "a new hand has touched the beakon" bout had a heart attack
Ah yes. The quest that no one finishes