So I just got in to the soul cairn and at first I was thinking "wow this is huge, gonna take me a while." An hour later and there is nothing left bar the fetch quest for journal parts.

Colour me extremely dissapointed AGAIN. Everyone was banging on about how great Blackreach was and then I get there and it has bugger all to it. Now its the same with the Soul Cairn. Nice design, but bugger all to do there. Really whats the point of making these huge zones if there is no reason to go back there?

Did you get Arvak..and did you find the spell tomes..fight the reaper and kill the zombie dragon and..oh mai spoilers..

D=

Yes it is annoying. There is nothing to do there even with those boring fetch style quests.

I hated soul cairn, I couldn't find the skull or the tomes and I just got lost. Horrible place, I wish never to go there again.

Got the horse, 3 (or 4) spell tomes for conjurations and beat the crap outa everything in the area including the dragon. Only the journal pieces to find and I am not holding my breath for the reward since most have been rather pants.

I mean wth? The area is huge and its ripe for loads of questing, but there aint much to do. Why no "rescue from the void" style quests for spirits, or have some of your captured NPC souls in there as enemies if your an assasin or similar. Gah, it just feels like Bethesda are slipping a bit when it comes to side questing.

How would they escape from the Soul Cairn when their bodies are most likely skeletised by now? Did you get all the Reaper fragments?

When I say "rescue from the void", I mean get them out of the soul cairn and in to soveingard. That would have been a good questline with you saving souls from the masters. didnt do the reaper fragments because I only found 2 and couldnt be bothered running around ti find them all when I didnt have a quest for it. Is it worth the effort really?

I felt the same way. Beth makes these two huge areas that look really cool (especially the Forgotten Vale) and all they are used for is a quick walkthrough of the main quest and some crappy scavenger hunt type quests. The soul cairn is a pain in the ass to for the journal quest though. You need to find 10 little pages in this massive area with basically one or two recognisable land marks. I find it really easy to get lost in there.
The forgotten vale is visually very nice to go through though. It isn't just a whole bunch of purple and dead.

I just fail to see why they couldn't have more to these areas. They had alot of potental.

no, its not really worth the effort '. I was a bit annoyed that I searched for the fragments...

Maybe in a future DLC they can expand on quests in the soul cairn , blackreach and the forgotten vale.

The thing is, most people want fresh new locations and not so much fleshing out existing ones

Yeah not to mention the stupid "merchant" whom you get those weird growths to "sell" him for random crappy low level items.

The buldings in the soul cairn looked and felt like they took 5 minutes to make. Just big empty buildings with 0 purpose. Nothing but a massive waste of space. I am really disapointed in the Soul Cairn. I hated watsing all that time looking for crap that doesn't even net me anything cool.

And there were no cool unique items gained from the Soul Cairn. I mean there was the spells (which I won't use), the horse (won't use) and a book (won't use because I can't). The 'boss' battles were lame and yielded no rewards. I mean the whole Soul cairn area was propably created in 15 minutes and left at that. It feels so unfinished.

I really hate the fact I will never use the forgotten vale or the soul cairn for Skyrim minus DG quests. I'd much rather Skyrim be fully fleshed out.

I agree. The Soul Cairn has the same problem as Blackreach. It's mostly just empty space.

Slightly off topic, but I need some help. I've found the building which holds the piece of my soul that Serana trapped, but I can't get to the bloody thing! Is there a secret door or something?

I would like to know the same thing if anyone could answer this.

Sounds like you need to find one of those little portals that look like a well in the ground. I can't remember exactly what I did to get to it because the Soul Cairn is just all one big blur to me now, but that is probably what you need to look for.

There is a dragon in blackreach, if you shoot the glowing yellow orb with unrelenting force a dragon pops out... That was cool.

If the rumours are true, the Soul Cairn has less content than it's original counterpart from the 1997 Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire.

It'd show how far games have gone from true quality and care.

I honestly couldn't wait to get out of the soul cairn. I'll probably go back to find more crap. I've snatched Arvak and finished the quest portion but the area was BLAH to me.

forgotten vale is 10 TIMES better.

I love Forgotten Vale.

Soul cairn was extremely unenjoyable. Damn... I really rushed to get out of there, easy to get lost, nothing interesting to explore so best to just slay durnehviir and get out

Yeah, Soul Cairn was a bore. I did everything in there (took 3 or more hours- soul husks for merchant, horse head, main quest, dragon summon, reaper and 10 pages of the journal). I found 8 out of 10 pages, and decided to look online for the last 2 pages because I was getting nauseous from trying to place in my head what parts I explored for the pages and couldn't make out which part was which. So, I got the other 2 pages I was lacking and got the "reward" that I won't ever need to use lol. I felt happy after I got out of there and the land of Skyrim never looked better to me compared to that hellish place!

I do love Dawnguard as a whole, though!

I love this place !
Haven't played yet

Yeah. I wasn't too impressed. Pretty bland. I tried to do what I needed to do and got out as soon as I could.

Agreed. Beautifully designed location.