The Vale Sabre Cat is the Dawnguard add-on’s take on Skyrim’s big cats, and it lives only in one very remote corner of the map. Compared with the common sabre cat, it is leaner and carries less fur, with a coat mottled in purple and brown. Its most striking feature is a faint purple bioluminescence – the cat glows softly while it lives, and the light goes out the moment it dies.
On paper it is a modest predator: level 6, 150 health and 225 stamina, with a 35-point bite or claw. That is lighter than you might expect for a creature guarding such an out-of-the-way place, but vale sabre cats are hostile on sight and still quick enough to punish a careless approach.
Where to find them
- Forgotten Vale – the hidden snowy valley reached during the Dawnguard storyline. Vale sabre cats prowl among the ice and ruins alongside frost trolls and other local wildlife.
- Darkfall Cave – the cave passage that leads into the Vale.
Outside these two places you will not meet one, so collect hides while you are there.
Notes
- A Vale Sabre Cat Hide is unusually valuable for crafters: one hide yields four pieces of leather at a tanning rack.
- The cat also drops the same alchemy ingredients as its mainland cousins: Sabre Cat Tooth and Eye of Sabre Cat.
- Vale sabre cats may not respawn because their respawn flag is missing. In the first area of the Vale, however, the cats that a frost troll kills come back as carcasses, so two hides can be collected again and again.
