Can I beat Skyrim as Gandalf the Grey? | Skyrim Challenges

how's it going everyone tsm here and welcome back to third street gaming today i thought i'd try something a bit different and take a break from the mass effect playthrough gaming challenges have been popular on youtube for a while now so i thought i'd try one for myself so let's figure out if i can beat skyrim as gandalf the grey i have a few of these character focus challenges in mind and they will all share roughly the same rule set i can only use equipment or magic that is directly related to the character so for gandalf no armor only one handed swords and the only magic i can use is for the staff i'm also not allowing myself to use dragon shouts except for the purpose of story progression i think it's definitely possible but will i be able to do it i'm sure it can be done i just suck we'll have decent damage output but i think due to the lack of armor we're gonna have to be really careful when going into close range combat this is gonna be a glass cannon kind of run with all that said let's get started not much to cover at the beginning everyone knows how skyrim starts but for those who don't know we get unfairly imprisoned nearly have our head cut off a dragon attacks and i need to get the [ __ ] out of dodge with regards to character creation i decide to be a breton due to the natural magic resistance i think i'm gonna need any buff i can get my hands on i call myself ganjal for the green because that's hilarious so i dash through the town and into some tunnels pick up some wizards rope so i'm not just a naked old man running around beat up some of she loves children sneak past the bear and i'm outside i did pick up a sword but i'm not allowing myself to use it yet at least not until i get a staff gandalf had his staff long before he had glambering so ganjalf will have to be patient i dash down the hill punch some wolves speak to gerda and she tells me that riverwood will need soldiers to defend them against a dragon if it comes back not sure how much a couple of soldiers can do against a massive lizard that burned down a whole town but we agreed to go talk to the isle of wight run on my way to the city i get told off by this hunter chick for not getting involved in a fight against a giant even though i'm an old man and i have no weapons to use i don't enter the city yet but instead take the horse and cart to winterhold so i can get to the majors college in this side plot you get a pretty nice staff early on and that's what i'm after to get in i need to pass a test and uh bugger the spell i'm given has a magical cost of one higher than i can have at this moment i think about what to do and decide that if i upgrade a skill that i'm not allowed to use to level up then i'm only making the game harder for myself so i craft a load of iron daggers level up and upgrade my magic that's a level point i can't get back since i'm not able to use magicka points in this run i go back to the college cast a spell at the floor and i'm in i get shown around and i'm directed to my first and only lesson at the school where tolfdir shows us how to cast wards which sucks because this would be a quite handy skill to have as it blocks magic after the lesson we get told to go to sarthal an ancient ruin that the college is looking into on the way some dumbass necromancers decide to pick a fight with me but being the mighty ganjalf they are quickly dealt with we arrive at sarthol and go in find some crappy enchanted rings touch an amulet and unlocked inside since this old guy in front of me is a bit incompetent he tells me to sling the amulet on to see what happens i guess for shits and gigs i see the wall i took it off is now looking a little bit weird so i blast it down with some magic i'm not using it in combat so i'm allowing it that frees the room up again we walk through the tunnel that's just been found and i'm contacted by a mystical hologram telling me to watch my ass cause shit's about to go down a zombies attack so i do the only thing i can and slap some [ __ ] up i keep going through and do some simple puzzles that i definitely didn't get stuck on and then i remember the guy who's with me sells stuff and there we go i finally have a staff now i can equip my sword and start doing some damage we go through and come into a room with a floating ball this is where the only staff i'll really use is found dead guy in the chair gets pity that i took his walking stick from him so i make sure he stays dead this time i pick up a note on his body that could lead to a useful amulet to have but as far as i'm aware gandalf never wore a necklace or amulet in the books or movies so i decide for this run i can't use it i get set back to the college but decide to go get my sword first the one that i'll mainly be using if you use the creator club then i can get access to a very nice one that looks probably as close to glamduring as i'm going to get i kill some bandits almost dying in the process get my sword and we're set to go on our way i head back to the college and speak with the archmage and tell him what we found in he sends me to see the librarian i read some books and then this obviously not evil guy asks what i'm up to i tell him to go sword himself and i peace out now i wasn't intending to finish the college side story i just wanted to get the staff and then get on with the main story but seeing as how this elf geezer kind of looks like sauron when he went by anata i decided to say [ __ ] it imma kill this guy gandalf was sent to middle earth to help with dealing with sauron after all so he shall die the librarian tells me that the books that would help with the floating testicle were stolen so i go to the fort where the thieves are hiding kill everyone take the books back and i go speak to tolster about all this only to be interrupted by our dark lord and savior asking why the hologram we saw earlier has rocked up asking to see me he paused his time to tells me shit's going to kick off soon and that i need to find the alga of dunlain i don't know if i said that right and i honestly don't care i go speak to tolfdir and decide to help a college student with an experiment on the way she hits me with a spell and it makes everything green i've never actually done this before instead of going to see a doctor i do what i do in the real world when [ __ ] goes wrong with me i just decide to write it out i'm told to go under the college and speak to a glowing light it tells me that resistance is futile that danny elfman has already spoken to it and that the only way to stop this is to use the staff of magnus after promising to make sure middle earth i mean skyrim won't be taken over and that it's not the end of days i speak to the archmage who says that i need to go fetch this stuff because i'm the main character mirabella's been looking into the staff and tells me where to find it i'm not even gonna try and pronounce that name just before i leave the green tint that has been making me sick for the last 20 minutes fades so i speak to the student again to see if her spell will work this time she casts it and ah oh my god oh my god oh what the hell ah what the [ __ ] why i gtfo to go and get this staff making sure that this is never spoken of again i arrive at the ruins and find a mage who does a classic find whoever speech before dying i'd go through help this other geezer out after telling him his mate just died and then have to do this other puzzle but seriously how does this make sense that i have to use fire and blizzard on this thing you know i really hate this game sometimes it took me ages i actually had to google how to do this one anyway i didn't record me solving it sorry but i get what i was after anyway i go to another ruin and see ghosts of other mages that were trying to do the same thing as me i don't really pay attention to what they're saying so i go through kill a bone dragon and decide to enchant a ring i know that gandalf ring focuses on fire but i haven't got anything like that so i buff my health to try and make up for the no armor and i carry on through killing some undead and spirits as i go i eventually come across an obvious boss room kill some spirits with a solid sword because that makes sense and then have to kill a dragon priest i thought this was going to be tricky but he just stood there and did nothing i snipe at him until my staff runs out of charge and then he finally decides to move and attack me i recharge my staff and eventually take him down grabbing the staff of magnus now i think i'm just being stupid but i did use this stuff for a bit because its effects seem cool but i didn't seem to do anything when i used it can someone in the comments explain how this stuff works because i'm thick as pig [ __ ] clearly i head out of the ribbon and i can't fast travel to the college so clearly something is going on in winterhold that i need to sort out i get there and i'm told that mirabelle died that kind of sucks oh well i blasted the weird aura until i get inside don't bother listening to all the evil dialogue from ankano so i kill him the order that called me by hologram turns up and decides to take over my bouncy ball and just like that i'm made head of the college of winterhold even though i've only been here like three days oh yeah the archmage died earlier anyway after getting some new robes i think it's time to just carry on with the main story i helped out in elf archer earlier and go back to riverwood to pick him up best to have an additional member with me you know just to help with some long range damage be a bit of a legolas i'll give him some new armor and we head to whiterun once i get there i tell the yard what happened and he sends troops to riverwood even though it's been at least a week in game time since the dragon came through really attentive this guy he takes me to talk to his court wizard and he sends me to bleakfall's barrow the ruin we saw at the top of the mountain when we were on our way to riverwood we aren't told why we're doing this or why it helps us with the immediate threat of a dragon flying about we just decided to go and do it i come across a small bandit outpost there isn't a lot of great loot but i'll take what i can get we carry on take the bandits that are actually outside the ruin not a lot of real challenges inside though weak bandits couple of feral animals and a giant spider that's never given me too much trouble in the past okay chance to level up on my one-handed skill against these guys i free and elf trapped in a web and kill him straight away because he has the golden claw something i need to progress further in the ruin draggers are waking up all over the place and i have no quiet way to take them out so i just slash them all up before they have the chance to do anything i reached a puzzle door that i just do instinctively now because i've played this game so many times we get the shout for force for the unrelenting force shout from a magic wall with symbols engraved all over it i'm sure you all know about fusa radar another undead bursts free from the coffin behind us but like everything else i've been fighting recently it's pretty damn easy i take the tablet and go back to whiterun so when i get back and hand the tablet over the yards bodyguard runs in and tells us that a soldier has just run back from a nearby watchtower to say a dragon has been flying about the yarl asked me to fight the dragon as i apparently have the most experience dealing with flying lizards i have seen one once and spent my time running away from it not sure if you'd call that experience but hey don't worry guys i'll perform this triple bypass surgery i've seen a tutorial of it on youtube as soon as we get to the tower the dragon comes back so it's boss fight time i've never used magic against a dragon before so i wasn't sure how this battle would go especially with no armor but the backup from the soldiers helped and it was taken out with little issue i stand next to the dragon it starts to kind of dissolve and i absorb a weird mist from it i shout and pow my breath is suddenly visible turns out i'm something called a dragonborn don't know what that means but i'm unable to fast travel to dragon's reach so clearly something to advance the plot is about to happen i head back to tell the y'all what happened at the tower and he tells me that it was the grey beards who were calling me i love how their way of contacting me is to stand outside their castle at the top of the tallest mountain in the region and just yell as loud as they can the roots of the grey birds is long and kind of boring with no real threat along it there is a frost troll on the way up the mountain that i normally find a bit tricky but ganjal for the moment is pretty op once i meet the greybeards they have me practice my new shout and even power me up with the second of the words for it they also teach me whirlwind sprint a dash kind of move once my training is complete they send me to retrieve the horn of jurgen wind caller god i loaded these names in these types of games are just really weird they don't tell me where it is but our deus ex machina over mini-map knows so i trust that over knowledge of these wise old men i enter another underground ruin filled with more undead and a few weak mages nothing to worry about the only problem is this puzzle i can't pass it without using the whirlwind sprint but since in the rules i can use shouts for the sake of story progression it's okay we can carry on through and come to the final room to discover that the horn has already been taken by someone i don't know how they were able to get here as i needed dragon shouts but i guess the story needs to progress somehow we're told to go to riverwood and rent the attic room at the inn on the way there i'm stopped by some cultists who claim i'm a fake dragonborn and attack me but i kill them because i'm too good this is the dragonborn dlc and since it isn't related to the main story we won't be doing it we're told by the woman running the inn that there is no attic room but there is one available over to the left we walk in and the woman immediately walks in after us to tell us she's the one that we're looking for no sense of subtlety at all delphine tells me to trust her even though she won't trust us when we say we're dragonborn and when she pretty much robbed us she gives me the horn and tells me to head to a place marked on a map of dragon burial sites apparently dragons are coming back to life and the only way to properly put one down is to devour the soul of said dragon as the dragon born i can do that when we get there a woman comes screaming down the hill that a dragon is attacking the exact burial mound that i'm looking for we get there and the dragon from the start of the game is shouting at the ground to resurrect one of his old dragon friends well we deny him and kill his friend sorry not sorry delphi now finally believes us and let me know that she's a member of the blades they haven't had much to do since the events of elder scrolls oblivion but now the dragons are back they're wanting a piece of the action she thinks the thalmora behind this mainly because they're a bunch of high elf mages who are constantly trying to undermine people so we have to go and infiltrate their headquarters it's a tightly guarded place and we will need to be careful i meet up with our associate and hand over all the equipment i want smuggled into this party so my staff a sword my robes and some potions that should do the trick when i get to the party i'm suddenly greeted by one of the hosts i tell her my name because i'm like gandalf ganjalf is a bit too slow to come up with a fake one on the spot i meet my inside guy and he tells me to cause a distraction so i can sneak out he hands me a drink i speak to the first guy i see and he says he will literally do anything for this exact bottle of wine i tell him to cause the disturbance i need and he accuses the host of sleeping with everyone at the party which is kind of jokes i think it's a shame that the only way you can proceed in this mission is to do this distraction i would have liked it if there were multiple ways to get through but oh well the inside guys takes me through the kitchens to a chest where all my smuggled gear is stored i throw on all my stuff and proceed through the embassy this is one of the missions i was most concerned about as i remember always having trouble fighting the elves in the embassy but i managed to breeze through this quite easily since i'm just running around killing everyone i'm amazed that the party hasn't been shut down but i guess the thalmor party like frat boys i find the documents that advance the story free a prisoner who has some useful info and look up to see our inside guy has taken prisoner i dash upstairs to save him but he seems really ungrateful that i just stopped him getting killed so i kill him too back at the end i get all the stuff i didn't smuggle into the party back and tell delphine that the falmouth know jack [ __ ] about what's going on with the dragons apparently they're looking for a guy named esburn she tells me that i can probably find him in the rat ways under riften so i head there when i enter the guy i'm meeting instantly calls me a crook and i've done nothing on this to earn my money or gear i tell him to get [ __ ] and head into the rat ways some thalma are hanging around so i quickly get rid of them i meet esburn and he says the world is coming to an end and all that woe is me [ __ ] but the second after i tell him i'm a dragonborn he switches up and asks me to take him directly to delphine fighting our way out since the thalmor show up is even easier and then getting in azburn is a pretty solid magic user once we get back he tells us about alduin's wall an artifact that documents the last time alduin was here and something that should tell us how to defeat the dragons and stop them coming back all together so we head off to skyhaven temple on the way we have our scripted dragon fight and fight some force one these guys are actually pretty strong and i nearly go down a couple of times but some minor healing fixed me up while i'm heading through i'm gonna plug my other channels you'll find links in the description to both my main channel where i just do some dumb [ __ ] and my reaction channel where i react to stuff it's kind of a name isn't it anyway this place only has a couple of easy puzzles or so no trouble but then we get to a blood seal where only the blood of a dragonborn can open it so i take a knife that i never had in my inventory drag it across my hand nothing comes out and i'm in brilliant security guys top-notch work when inside esborne begins to explain the history of the dragon wars that have been carved into this wall by the blades not sure why seeing as house stone erodes i think the blades aren't too bright he says we need a shout that can pull a dragon down from the sky and since we have to head back to the grey beards anyway to deliver the horn i guess we're killing two birds with one stone i go back to high hrothgar and hand them the horn back i am taught the final word of unrelenting force and the greybeards initiate me by whispering at me [Music] after that i talked to aaron gar and he says he won't teach me the shout because it was tried once and it failed so the world is meant to end i think both the blades and greybeards are a bit touched in their head he gets yelled at by his boss and then he decides he was being too emotional and to go talk to their leader parthenox who lives at the summit of the mountain what he shouted at this guy to get him to change his mind i don't know i'm taught the clear skies shout to clear away to the summit a few ice raves are in the way but nothing too serious at the top we meet parthenax and it turns out my guy's a dragon the first thing he does is breathe fire on a wall have us look at said wall and then have us breathe fire on him because apparently that's how dragons say hi now this bit with parthenax is really long and i can't be asked to go through the whole thing basically the shout we were sent up here to learn yeah he won't teach us it in fact he can't dragons can't learn dragon rend because it was a creation of humans even though it still uses a dragon's native language doesn't make sense to me but [ __ ] it more story needs to happen it turns out that the nords who were fighting edwin the first time it didn't dispel or banish him only send him forwards in time so that's why he's here now so they [ __ ] up and now we have to clean up after them parthenox thinks that if we can get our hands on an elder scroll then we can look into the past learn dragon rend and maybe even fix the rift in time that was caused by alduin being sent forwards it takes parthenax about 10 to 15 minutes to explain all this and i think i did it in about a minute this guy needs to learn to speed the hell up i ask about to see if anyone knows where i can find an elder scroll and the college of winterhold apparently might so i head back to my school to speak with the librarian and ask if he either knows about them or has them this guy's response is to sass me and ask if i think he would let me read it if he had one this [ __ ] i'm your boss you thick [ __ ] he tells me a wizard traveled north years ago though and he was studying the scrolls so i head to the most northern part of skyrim to see what's up i get there and he tells you that the scroll is located in tamriel for those of you who don't know elder scrolls law that's effectively the equivalent of saying oh you're looking for jeff yeah he's on earth he hands me a cube and a sphere and the name of an ancient dwemer ruin this is the part i am most concerned about going into this ruin the worker spiders and spheres are kind of okay to deal with so are the thalmar but with no armor the centuries i think are gonna be a [ __ ] and a half to deal with luckily i think i only have to fight one so if i can get past that the rest of the place shouldn't be too much trouble i enter black reach and proceed through trying to avoid as many traps as possible as they're quite lethal the farther i go into the dungeon the trickier it gets and eventually i come across the centurion i was worried about if i keep my distance just blast it with my staff then i should be [ __ ] well that didn't go very well luckily i don't have to get through very much before i'm back at that fight this time i throw every staff i have at this thing to kill it i have to use a lot of my potions and even use a level up to heal but it eventually goes down jeez i carry on and end up in this vast underground city i have never actually explored this area before in any playthrough and i decide not to right now i don't know what i'll find and i have to carefully skirt around another two centurions while avoiding fire from more falmar eventually we arrive in the final room and this puzzle has never made sense to me in the 10 years that i've been playing skyrim i have never understood this puzzle so i randomly press the button to grab the elder scroll and return to the summit of the throat of the world to speak with parthenax he tells us to read the scroll at the time wound to look into the past we see what happened the first time and we learned dragon rand after seeing alduin get sent forward in time we stop reading the scroll look up and alduin is there ready to fight me now this is where i need to use another shout you see in the air alduin can't be damaged so dragon rend is actually required to beat this fight there are also meteors that are raining down on me through this fight and i think that if you use clear skies it stops it but since that shout isn't required to beat this fight we're not using it we eventually beat alduin and he pieces out parthenox tells us that if we want to finish alduin off then we need to get one of his friends to bring us to him so our new plan is to trap a dragon we head to dragon's reach and speak to the yal but he says he won't agree to the plan while the war is currently raging on in fact the yale isn't thrilled about the idea in general as it involves trapping a dragon in his palace can't say i really blame the guy he says he'll consider it though if there is a truce between the imperials and the stormcloaks they're a big part of the game but only if you do the civil war side quest storyline they don't really impact with the main story short version stormcloaks are rebels who think the empire's rule on skyrim is a load of crap they're not all wrong it does seem like a hostile takeover and the empire isn't even acknowledging some of their gods at the same time though the stormcloaks are just nord supremacists who are actually kind of dicks i prefer to side with the empire when i do this story i go to the greybeards and request if they can host a peace talk for us both sides seem to respect the greybeards so this plan seems as good as i can make it right now i speak to y'all african general tullius to get them to come to the truce talks neither takes the idea seriously and only go as a courtesy once there ulfric instantly begins demanding the control of cities from the empire and we're left to play tiebreaker a lot of the time eventually alfred gets pissed and accuses me of being disloyal to skyrim even though i'm a breton i don't come from skyrim people have to speak up to remind everyone why we're here and eventually the two sides agree to a ceasefire and they trade a couple of cities after that i have a quick talk with esburn who tells me the name of a dragon who i can use to take me to elderwin we head back to the right run and spring the trap on the dragon odoving i hope i pronounced that right i lure him in spring the trap now i don't understand why he can't break free from this my man can breathe fire and the trap is made of wood i hope elder scrolls six won't be as full of plot holes we can convince odiving to take us to aldewin and from here on out we're on our own i say goodbye to my elf follower and fly off into the distance we arrive in an area filled with undead and a bunch of dragons flying around i take out the drauga and avoid the dragons i can't be bothered to fight them i dash through solve some easy puzzles and sprint into the portal so sovengaard we run through the fog that has nothing in it speak to this hulking man and we have to fight him to gain entrance to the hall of valor pretty easy fight nothing to worry about we go in and we're met by the nords who fought alduin the first time they don't really tell any plot details only saying we're gonna kick alderwin's ass and take his lunch money like high school bullies we all charge outside and to get him to show up we need to clear the fog away once he does show up we again have to use dragon ren so we can hit him but with a pretty strong sword and staff and four other guys slicing away at him the fight is over pretty quickly we watch alduin explode and we speak to baon who sends us back to the world of the living ending the run and proving you can beat skyrim as gandalf the grey that was actually pretty fun i was expecting it to be trickier due to the no armor but we managed to do this pretty easily i hope you enjoyed the video if so please leave a like subscribe to the channel and follow me on instagram at third street man also comment down below on what other challenges you want to see me try i have a couple of other skyrim challenges filmed and i'm currently doing a mass effect legendary playthrough so be sure to check all those out thanks for watching and i'll see you next time [Music] you

Channel: TSM Plays

Views: 9,935

Keywords: Skyrim, Gaming, Challenge

Id: M07ZKimrr2M

Length: 25min 7sec (1507 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 21 2022