Skyrim player finds wild alternate ending after 1,000 hours

One player has just discovered that a very specific quest in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim actually has a completely different alternate ending, although it seems a lot of players were only unaware that this is possible due to, you guessed it, a classic Bethesda bug.

If you enter the Temple of Kynareth in Whiterun, you'll most likely end up being given a quest by the NPC Danica Pure-Spring called 'The Blessings of Nature'.

She wants you to travel to the Eldergleam Sanctuary, hack away at the Eldergleam tree inside, and gather some of its sap. Pretty straightforward.

Upon doing this however, a bunch of Spriggans will spawn and most likely end up killing everyone at the Eldergleam Sanctuary. Whatever the outcome, you can deliver the sap to Danica and the quest will be completed.

Except, there’s actually a much happier ending to this quest, as spotted by one user over on the r/skyrim subreddit.

It's surely time for an Elder Scrolls VI update?

It turns out that if you bring an NPC called Maurice Jondrelle to the Eldergleam Sanctuary, he’ll offer you an alternative solution.

If you accept, he’ll pray to the Eldergleam tree and it will offer him a sapling, which you can use in place of the sap Danica requires to complete the quest. Plus, the Spriggans won’t actually spawn this way, so none of the NPCs die.

It seems a lot of commentators in the thread had no idea this was possible, but a few of the ones that did note that they could never actually get this alternate outcome to work.

“I had no idea you could do this,” commented user Shalash-Elin.

“I kept trying to slow time and save the people in the sanctuary. They just kept dying, and I got bored of reloading. Im gonna try this next time!”

“This is something I've never seen, Maurice has never triggered for me at the temple so I've always done the sap method,” replied user ultinateplayer.

Well, that’s to be expected of a Bethesda game I guess. Here’s hoping that the next Elder Scrolls title is a little lighter on the jank side of things.