The Final Descent is a Dragonborn side quest set beneath Raven Rock. Crescius Caerellius, nearly eighty and stubborn as a mule, is convinced the East Empire Company lied about how his great-grandfather Gratian died in the mine two centuries ago. His wife thinks age has gone to his head. You get to find out who is right.
How to start
Enter Raven Rock Mine on Solstheim, where Crescius and his wife Aphia Velothi are arguing about him poking around the shafts again. Talk to Crescius. After some suspicion he explains that he found Gratian’s things in an old chest at home: an unsent letter to the East Empire Company describing a discovery the diggers made, and a key. He believes the Company sealed off that section to hide something. He gives you the letter and the key and asks you to find Gratian’s remains and his journal.
Aphia offers the other side of the story if you ask: Gratian was a Company explorer sent around Tamriel to fix troubled mines, and the official version is that he died in a tunnel collapse.
Walkthrough
Down through the mine
Head down the walkways. Side caves hold a skeever, a skeleton, minor loot and frostbite spiders, and there is a fire trap in a corner. Smash the wooden barrier blocking the stairs; an expert-locked East Empire Company strongbox sits by the iron gate. Use Gratian’s key on the gate.
The hidden tomb
The miners clearly broke into an ancient Nord tomb. Expect plenty of draugr, some of them deathlords, including one sitting on a throne and a whole hall of them on thrones (with a master-locked chest on the left). Swinging-door pressure plates and lightning traps can do much of the killing for you if you lure enemies into them. An archer on the bridge ahead can be sniped from the entrance while sneaking.
Along the way you pass a stalhrim deposit (it needs an Ancient Nordic Pickaxe) and an alchemy lab with two netch jellies, handy for Milore Ienth’s Fetch the Netch. A door behind a waterfall leads into Bloodskal Barrow.
Bloodskal Barrow
Go back and up the stairs on the right; the button for that door is on the far side of the chamber. Watch for an expert-locked chest under an arcane enchanter, an Ice Spike spell tome on a pillar, an adept chest under a ramp, another lightning trap, a chain-operated secret door hiding a chest, pressure plates on a walkway and one more adept chest behind a door.
Gratian’s journal
In the final room you have to jump down, and there is no way back until the dragon priest is defeated. Follow the water to a chest, then take Gratian’s Journal from his corpse. Reading it is optional.
The Bloodskal Door and Zahkriisos
The way onward is the Bloodskal Door, opened with the Bloodskal Blade. Power attacks with the blade fire a red energy beam: a sideways power attack from standing sends a horizontal beam, a straight one a vertical beam. Stand at the top of the stairs and aim at the glowing red cracks on the left and right sides of the door. Answer a horizontal crack with a horizontal power attack and a vertical one with a vertical attack. The wall panels shift after each hit, so keep matching until no red cracks remain on either side. A new crack then appears in the centre; hit it vertically and the door opens.
Zahkriisos
Get past the swinging blade traps and pull the lever at the end of the hallway. The chest in the middle of the next room is bait: it holds just two gold, and walking up to it wakes the dragon priest Zahkriisos. He calls in seekers and casts the master-level Lightning Storm. Good tactics: crouch behind a fallen pillar and pop out to fire the blade’s beam, bring a follower with a bow as a distraction, or corner him somewhere tight (so he cannot float off over the water) and go werewolf. When he dissolves into ash, take his mask and loot, and learn a word of Dragon Aspect from the Word Wall.
Apocrypha and the way out
Through the exit on the right at the west end of the room, a stand holds a Black Book. Reading it pulls you into Apocrypha; step forward, minding the tentacles in the water, to begin Black Book: The Winds of Change. When you finish it you return to where you picked up the book.
Grab the leveled loot from the chest on the left, climb the stairs and go through the door. At the end of the passage, pull the chain on the left to open the stone door. Dark Elf reavers block the path to the exit; you must clear both towers outside before fast travel works, and an adept-locked chest waits on top of the second tower.
Return to Crescius
Find Crescius at his house in Raven Rock and give him the journal. He feels vindicated: Gratian never died in a rockfall, and the story was invented to keep people away from the tombs. He plans to make the East Empire Company answer for the lie and pays you what an old retired miner can afford. Note that you cannot drop the Bloodskal Blade until the journal is handed in.
Rewards
- Leveled gold from Crescius: 250 (level 1–9), 400 (10–19), 500 (20–29), 600 (30–39) or 750 (40+).
- The Bloodskal Blade.
- The mask Zahkriisos.
- The Black Book The Winds of Change.
- A word of Dragon Aspect.
- Raven Rock Mine reopens and becomes a big source of ebony ore.
Tips and notes
- The setup echoes Soljund’s Sinkhole in Skyrim, another mine where the diggers broke straight into a draugr tomb.
- Zahkriisos’s room is a one-way trip: once you drop down for Gratian’s journal there is no going back until he is dead.
- Crescius later turns down the job of Neloth’s steward in Reluctant Steward.
