Volunruud is south of Dawnstar and suth east of Solitude:
Solving the Door Puzzle
To acquire the items you need you have to go though the side caves from the entrance cave. There is one on the left and right of the passage to the door that will lead you forward. In the right side cave the sword is lying in the coffin at the end of said cave. In the left side cave you will find the weapon framed above the throne on which the draugr boss sits. You can kill him fairly easily by using a bow and arrow and sneak attacking him if you don’t have very good armor and weapons. I usually tank the damage and retreat to heal with magic or potions.
Killing Kvenel the Toungue
Named enemies are always tough to kill. Kvenel the Tongue is a ghost whom you can find near the wall with the word of power. He has a few other allies with him. Be sure to kill those first and then start working on killing Kvenel. A good tactic is to dodge his attacks by walking backwards and forwards in tune with your weapon swings which often avoid a lot of the blows these types of enemies deal. Be sure to keep an eye on your health, it can sometimes drop much faster than you expect.
You can locate the Autumwatch Tower west of Riften and south of Windhelm:
Killing the Dragon
Autumwatch Tower is only guarded by a dragon. You have the opportunity to retreat into a tower in which the dragon can’t attack you with it’s magical or physical attacks. . If you are playing on a higher difficult the easiest way to take the dragon out is by using a bow and arrow. When the dragon uses it’s breath to damage you, retreat into the tower until it stops. Then come back out and shoot it with your bow.
Alternatively you can tank the damage. That is what I like to do because I am a little bit impatient. I generally don’t use a bow and arrow, I wait for the dragon to land and then flank it so that it can’t hit me with fire/frost breath. It will still damage you by stomping the ground, but that damage is significantly less than when it breathes fire or frost.
Full YouTube Walk Through Video
Below is a YouTube video in which I complete this word of power quest fully. I show you my preferred way to kill the dragon and talk about some tactics involved with that strategy.
At the entrance you will run into Medresi Dran who is after the treasure at Agravunde. I chose to kill her to save future trouble when she might be expecting a blade in the back.
Anyway, Agravunde is mainly focused on solving puzzles. There are a few draugr around, but they are all fairly easy to kill because of their lower level. When you get to the main cave the way forward will be blocked by two main gates. You will have to complete side dungeons in order to go forward. The first that I went through is the one on the right side of the main cave. You can see a video explanation of this below.
Side Caves Puzzles
In that particular dungeon at some stage there will be spikes in the obvious way forward. You will find another doorway out of that small cave which you have to follow on a detour and evetually you will find a leaver that will lower all the spikes necessary. The small cave to the left of the main cave is even simpler. There are no puzzles to solve there.
Once you have pulled both the leavers and thus lifted the two gates it is a straight run to the wall with the word on it. I expected a final boss, but there isn’t one.
Full YouTube Walkthrough Video:
Below you can find a YouTube video that shows the entire dungeon with live commentary which explains what I was thinking about at the time and also post commentary to help with more difficult sections of the dungeon.
You can find Volksygge west of Solitude and north east of Morthal:
Animal Sequence Puzzle
Near the beginning of this dungeon you run into a puzzle in a room where in the middle there are four coffins and to the sides are handles associated with images of animals. There is a book that is supposed to help you with the puzzle, but I found the book a little confusing and my interpretation of what the book said wasn’t correct. The correct combination is Snake, Bear, Fox and then Wolf. You can see the solution being executed in the following video:
Final Dungeon Boss
The next section that you might have difficulty with is when you run into the final boss of the dungeon (not of the word of power quest at Volksygge). What particular boss you will face depends on your level, but in general it should be some kind of strong draugr. I had a Draugr Death Overlord, which is one of the more tougher draugr to face. To defeat him you can use a bow and arrow to take shots at him whilst hidden. Once he finds you, run and hide until you are hidden again. Then return and take more shots at him.
The method I like to use is to tank the damage that he deals until I am out of health, then retreat and heal myself whilst retreating with magic. Then go tank some more damage. You can also heal yourself with potions during the fight, but I prefer to use magic because potions are sparse and using magic levels restoration up which can take quite a while if you don’t use it constantly. You can see the latter techniques in action in the video below.
Volsung
After you have learned the word of power you will be faced with dealing with Volsung, the final boss of the word of power quest at Volksygge. He is one of those spirit type creatures that can only use magic to deal damage to you and thus always try to stay at long range to you. It makes them really easy, but time consuming, to kill. What I usually like to do is use the cover around as protection whenever I get low on health rather than retreating, but much the same techniques as for the final boss above can be used here. The video below shows another way, although it might not be consistent because in the video Volsung gets trapped and for some reason does not attack for quite a while.
Full YouTube Walkthrough Video:
The final video below shows an entire walkthrough of Volksygge with live commentary to tell you what I am thinking and post commentary in some of the sections that needed further explanation. In it you will find the sections I linked above.
