Hunt and Gather is a scavenger hunt for Wylandriah, the absent-minded court wizard of Riften in the Rift. She needs three objects for her research, and she has managed to leave each of them in a different corner of Skyrim. You collect a spoon, an ingot and a soul gem, carry them back to her in Mistveil Keep, and walk away with some rather powerful magic for an errand that involves no mandatory fighting at all.
How to start
Talk to Wylandriah in Mistveil Keep, the Jarl’s residence in Riften, and offer to help with her work. She muses about needing an assistant, or maybe a familiar, before deciding that you will do. She then tells you where she left each of the three items.
Walkthrough
All three items are stored in satchels named Wylandriah’s Satchel. They do not get quest markers on the map, because the objectives are filed under miscellaneous quests, so use the locations below.
Retrieve Wylandriah’s Ingot
Travel to Winterhold and enter The Frozen Hearth, the inn you see right as you come into town. The satchel with the ingot is on a bookshelf inside.
Retrieve Wylandriah’s Spoon
Head to Fellstar Farm in Ivarstead, the village at the foot of the Throat of the World. The spoon’s satchel is at the farm.
Retrieve Wylandriah’s Soul Gem
Go to Windhelm and enter The White Phial, the alchemy shop run by Nurelion and Quintus. The satchel sits on a barrel under the stairs. (The shop shares its name with the quest The White Phial, which also starts there.)
Return to Wylandriah
Once all three items are in your pack, the objective updates to return to Wylandriah. Speak to her in Mistveil Keep. She takes all three items from your inventory and, impressed by your foresight, rewards you.
Rewards
- Expert-level spell tomes, depending on your spellcasting skill being high enough
- Scroll of Hysteria
- Scroll of Bane of the Undead
- Scroll of Blizzard
- Scroll of Mass Paralysis
The source is not precise about which spell tomes you receive, only that they are expert-level and tied to your magic skills.
Tips and notes
- Taking the items counts as legitimate, even though they sit in a shop, an inn and a private home, so you will not get a bounty.
- The satchels exist before the quest starts. If you grab one early and then talk to Wylandriah, she behaves as if the quest is already running, but it may not appear in your journal and no markers will guide you to the rest. Starting the quest first is cleaner.
- Wylandriah’s Ingot is really an Orichalcum Ingot with no weight and no value, just named oddly.
- Wylandriah’s Spoon is one of only three unique pieces of silverware in Skyrim, which makes it tempting for collectors. Once handed in, the items cannot be recovered, and pickpocketing her does not work because she does not carry them. The only way to keep them is to kill Wylandriah before finishing the quest, which turns them into normal items. It is up to you whether a spoon is worth a court wizard.
