Im sure this has been asked and I'm not looking formspoilers...

Is there any reasonable way in game to be directed toward them? The only two I have found were random encounters. One was from a spot on the dragonstone. The other a ruin I decided to explore.

Are there books? Maps? Quests? The only way I knew there were more was from a load screen

None of the Masks are found at random, they all have a set location. Some quests will guide you towards finding them. That is all I can say without spoiling it.

Are the quests all guild related? Seems like a previuos toon found one or two during the Mage line...

No

You will get most of them through the questlines and if you read the right book on your travels you will get a hint as to what to do when you have all but one.

This should be in Spoilers...

You talking about Word Walls or Dragon Priests there? The former I know about, but he has never mentioned (to me) the latter.

Dragon Priests are always guiding word walls so if you keep doing greybeard quests you will eventually find them all. Only one guild will put you directly on the path to get a mask everything else is from radiant or a side quest that starts when you go to the actual mask location (there are quite a few).

Only one of the masks is guild related
Two are found outside, one of which requires going through a dungeon to get it without rock-hopping


Three of them are quest-based, but only after arriving at the ruin they are located at.

The last ones have no connection to them based on quest, although one is alluded to by a Markarth guard sometimes as a place of great evil.

I found about 5 or 6 whilst randomly dungeon diving. I was going through my phase of completely and utterly failing to complete quests because I was being attracted, moth-like, to every ruin, cave and fort that popped up on my compass.

*scooting along, undiscovered location pops up on compass*

"Oh, I spose I'll get close so I can fast travel to it later"

*gets close and has it marked*

"Hmmm, now I'm here, I I should stick my head in quickly, see what its like"

*enters*

"Oooh, whats behind this door/down this passage?"

*fights first enemy*

"Well, now I've killed something I may as well do the whole dungeon"

Repeat ad infinitum.

...

Part of the fun and suspense is exploring and stumbling across a dragon wall and losing your mind when a dragon priest pops out of the tomb to pwn your sorry butt. Knowing where to find each mask ruins the fun imo and only leads to meta power gaming...

If they do it will get moved over maybe but it's not like that's a rarity.

The above was for Senor Cinco before he edited his post out of existence.

And that's my rub. There's no RP reason to get all of them then. I'm guessing that even going into each Nordic ruin won't net all of them. Right? It seems like the MQ leads to one...which I'm not overly eager to do again

The OP has a simple "general" question. This is not a request to disclose information on the locations of the masks, but IF one is eventually directed to the locations through quests or are they just random encounters.

The intent is genuine, by the OP, but some members are going to start posting locations.

I can say it like this: There is a reward for collecting all the masks.

If an element of your RP fitted with the properties of the last mask you can get then it's a worthy quest.
Then there is the completionists and the magpies who just can't resist a unique shiny.

Fair enough to all.

This toon is the most 'magery' so far. I will do some more ruin diving to practice my arcane abilities. If I find em, great. If not, ok.

Thanks for the replies

That's the spirit! You'll make a tonne of money in the process too.