Convenient Locations for Skyrim- High Gate Ruins (1 of 3)

High Gate Ruins is a dungeon just to the North of Ustengrav- virtually directly North, in fact, across the border in The Pale.  This dungeon provides you with not-inconsiderable loot, and the first word of a brand-new Thu’um, just in case you have spare dragon souls lying around from dragons you ran across (or that ran across you) while you were wandering around.  While the location itself is convenient and the rewards for the dungeon are convenient, it includes something distinctly not convenient: a thoroughly uncontrollable NPC by the name of Anska.

Anska is a Nord woman who you encounter on your way into the ruin- she is looking for a scroll that will inform her on her ancestry, and knows it to be somewhere in this ruins.  If you take the time to talk to her, she requests that you team up with her to explore the ruin- and if you want to complete more quests and get more rewards for it, you’ll say ‘yes’.  This may turn out to be a mistake.

Anska, despite being a fur-armor-wearing Nord, is a Destruction specialist.  She refuses to speak, attacks or is detected at inopportune times, and is excessively fond of the Fireball spell, which wouldn’t be so bad if the blazing eruptions the spell causes didn’t completely obscure everything going on in their area of effect.  While she doesn’t toss them out absolutely constantly, the explosions are frequent enough to really put a cramp in your fighting, especially if you’re using archery since things get a half-second or so to move around while you can’t see them to track them.  Just to make things worse, she stays -too- close to you a lot of the time, often running up to you and shoving you around by trying to stand in the spot where you’re standing.  This can be hell on sneaky characters, especially bow snipers.

Overall the girl is a fairly hefty liability unless you and any follower you have with you are also area-of-effect spellcasters.  Even a durable follower that ‘tanks’ for you, like Lydia, can only do so much to help with Anska’s explosions inciting chaos in the battle.  It may well be worth it to have your follower wait outside and enter the dungeon in ‘sneak mode’, skulking around the shadows and watching Anska flash-fry all the undead in here.

And there are quite a few of them.   After the first large room, which basically is occupied by a bunch of re-killed draugr and Anska, you encounter another, bigger room.  This ritual sacrifice room looks like there’s a draugr lurking on the altar for you, but that body is actually dead.  There are a couple of the things shambling around near the far end of the room, though- either snipe them so Anska doesn’t have a chance to ruin your fighting strategy, or move up to get their attention and then walk them in circles while the mage blasts them to bits.  Once you’ve tossed the lower area for all it’s worth, move up to the room’s balcony and root around.  If you haven’t read it elsewhere, check the skeleton in the corner for A Hypothetical Treachery, a skill book for Destruction magic.  Even if you don’t use Destruction Magic, adding a rank to a skill gets you experience towards increasing your level.