Good lord, sometimes the secondary aspects of playing Skyrim are just as tedious and quest-like as playing the game itself. Let me explain.
In my second Skyrim playthrough I've been using an Alchemy/Enchanting trick to increase the boosts on my weapons. Basically I don all my top Fortify Alchemy items, create a Fortify Enchanting potion, then imbibe that before enchanting a new set of items with a higher Fortify Alchemy boost. This is then used to make a stronger Fortify Enchanting potion, so as to make an even stronger set of Fortify Alchemy items, and so on and so forth. With this exploit I've gotten my enchantment boost levels up to about 45%.
Today I realized that the Ahzidal's Armor set, which can be obtained over time through a series of excavation quests in the Dragonborn DLC, gives a rare boost to Enchanting if you wear more than four pieces at once (which reminded me of my Diablo II days, collecting armor set pieces over hundreds of hours, highlighted in green text). I've never seen any other item in the game give a boost to Enchanting. I thought, No problem, I'll just grab them out of the chest at my estate in Heljarchen Hall, and I'll get started on a whole new set of boosted items.
I get to my estate and realize there's no way I can put on four pieces of the armor set on all at one time. There's a helm and a faceplate, which you can't wear simultaneously. There are three rings, same thing. And a set of boots. WTF. I messed up somewhere. I look up the armor set and realize there's a breast plate and set of gauntlets that are not in my inventory. Fine, I probably stored them in Whiterun. Off I go.
As some of you may recall, I spent two hours in Skyrim recently trying to find all my Unique items, which I'd stored before playing Dawnguard. So I was very relieved to see the breast plate was in my chest in Breezehome. However, the Gauntlets were nowhere to be seen. In fact, I was pretty sure I'd never had them at all. How was that possible? They were a quest reward at the end of every phase of the excavation of the barrow in which they were entombed.
In a panic, I turned to the Internet. How do you find an item you may have accidentally dropped or sold? You're SOL, said basically everyone. You'll have to retrace your steps. One person suggested going back into old files when you did own the item, and comparing it to later files when you did not, and trying to close the gap between the two to figure out where you may have stored it. Another suggested turning the collision mode off to explore the void beyond the programmed cells, because sometimes the game's wacky mechanics send objects flying across several rooms when they're disturbed.
Discouraged, I nonetheless started searching my save files and found one from my playthrough of Dragonborn. Sure enough, I'd never owned the Gauntlets, and they were not located in the area described by the game Wiki. Fuck. So I decided to try turning off the collision mode, so I could travel through walls and see if the item was scattered. I wandered around in the ambiguous gray mass until I realized I could see weapons and armor from a distance with more clarity then the outline of the rooms, and maybe I could use that to track down the Gauntlets.
Sure enough,there they were, behind an obscure stone wall that was nowhere near where Wiki had directed me. I'd never found them and I probably never would have, either.
Three hours. THREE HOURS. THIS TOOK ME THREE HOURS. THREE HOURS OF MY LIFE ARE GONE TO THIS. WHY DO I NOT REGRET IT MORE.
