The Anniversary Edition of Skyrim brings some unexpected, yet hardly unwelcome additions to the game, and one of these is the ability for players to obtain, own, and maintain a plantation found east of Rorikstead.
Why And How To Complete The Unquiet Dead
The Goldenhills Plantation starts out as an abandoned farm, but through the player's efforts, they can turn it into a profitable venture to run parallel to their spelunking and adventuring in Skyrim, as well as hire farmhands and a steward to help administer the holding. In order to do so, however, they must first complete the quest titled The Unquiet Dead.
To start The Unquiet Dead, players should make their way to the Goldenhills Plantation by exiting Rorikstead, a farming town located in the Hold of Whiterun, and journeying on towards the east. Once the location has been discovered (and therefore unlocked for future Fast Travel purposes), the player will be attacked by a ghost whose defeat triggers the quest initiation. An alternative means of obtaining the quest is to ask an innkeeper in one of the many taverns of Skyrim for rumors – upon which players will be directed towards the farm to investigate a haunting.
With the ghost dispatched, the next step for players would be to look for the body of Urval near the plantation home proper, among whose personal effects will include a torn page from a journal, hinting that the player should look for the rest of it to make sense of the tragedy that befell the farm. To do so, one would need to enter the house and climb upstairs to the top floor, where Urval's journal can be found.
The journal speaks of Urval's suspicions that his wife, Jonquil, practiced witchcraft – as well as that she poisoned him after Urval confronted her on the matter. The next course of action for players would be to go downstairs to the basement. There, one will find an entrance to Jonquil's hidden laboratory by looking to their right and pressing a button on the wall by the door – a staple of several quests in Skyrim.
Once this is done, the cupboard will move to reveal a path to the laboratory, where Jonquil's ghost will attack the players. Upon dispatching their spectral assailant, the players will be able to read her journal on the apothecary table that further sheds some light on the events that caused the haunting. Namely, it reveals that the couple killed each other following the disappearance of their son, Rin, with each side blaming the other for their child's murder.
With the truth uncovered, the final stage of the quest involves finding Rin's journal in his room and discovering the boy's actual fate. The journal mentions the boy's plans of going to an old well to hunt a wolf – which the players can find by exiting the house and heading towards the southeast, looking to their left, until they come across a pack of wolves, one of Skyrim's easiest group of enemies.
Upon taking care of the pack through their Dragonborn's weapon of choice, the players will find Rin's gnawed-up skeleton next to the well, including a wooden toy sword still locked in his grip. The quest concludes once they take the sword back and place it underneath the Imperial banner found in his room. This summons all three ghosts near the player's location, with the boy handing over the keys to the farm as thanks for laying his family's troubled spirits to rest.
With the key to the Goldenhill Plantation obtained, and the haunting problem taken care of, players can now put the farm to use, and further upgrade it through various construction options, not unlike those introduced in Skyrim's Hearthfire DLC.
Skyrim is now available on PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.