Skyrim's been out a while.

[Tonus]

It's not a particularly difficult quest to complete... if you explore blackreach. I'm an explorer at heart, so finding 30 of the 44 crimson nirnroot comes naturally to me.

Console work, i find, trivializes the experience of the game. "This is too hard, or that's too annoying, or that's too long..." it's instant gratification. Put some actual work behind it, and your rewards will start feeling like rewards

I like exploring, but for its own sake. That way, when I find something cool, I can focus on that and not worry about the singing weeds. I like a challenge if it's difficult, but not if it's boring. Still, if the quest had been part of some larger chain I might've put up with the tedium, but I just wanted to see how it ended.

The nice thing about the console and mods is that you get to play two different versions of Skyrim. The game as the developer intended it to be played is one. I went with a "rogue" build because sneaking around was fun. And dinging people with a bow from a mile away was fun. And occasionally one-shotting people before they even knew you were there was a LOT of fun. Killing a dragon with a bow, daggers, and healing spells was... challenging. As in painful. But fun when I succeeded.

Then there was the second version. That was the one where my stealth levels made me undetectable, and my dragon shout would launch enemies about a mile away from me. I didn't play that version to finish any of the story lines. I played it to see if I could shout some bandit leader beyond the point where Ultra video settings could track him, then see if I could find his corpse. Success rate was around 90%, because I didn't always clear the nearest mountain.