Why does nobody talk about Ill Met by Moonlight as a build fork

[TamrielTactician]

I just replayed this quest on my current playthrough and realized it's actually a massive decision point that nobody treats like one. You either side with Hircine and get the ring, or you side with Sinding and get... basically nothing except feeling morally superior I guess.

But here's the thing - the ring is genuinely broken for certain builds and I think that's why people don't talk about it. If you're doing any kind of werewolf playthrough it's obviously the move. But if you're not, taking it feels like you're gimping yourself for RP reasons, which is fine, but then the quest just becomes "go kill a guy for no mechanical reward" and that feels bad.

On my current playthrough I'm doing a pure melee build (no magic, no archery, just swords and heavy armor) and I took the ring just to see if it would actually matter. It doesn't. The transformation is cool but I'm never going to use it when I can just tank damage and bash things. So I'm sitting here with an artifact I don't want and I feel like I made the wrong choice but also like the quest didn't really give me a good choice to begin with.

Does anyone actually use the ring outside of dedicated werewolf runs? Or do you just take it for completionist reasons and then never touch it?

 

[WhiterunModder]

yeah the ring is kind of a trap artifact honestly. it's strong if you commit to werewolf stuff but if you're not already building around that it just sits in your inventory. and you're right that siding with Sinding gives you basically nothing except the warm feeling of not being a monster, which in a game where you can commit genocide for the Forsworn or join the Dark Brotherhood is... not much of a moral high ground lol.

the real issue is the quest assumes you care about the werewolf fantasy when a lot of players don't. like if you're already doing Companions and you get the beast blood anyway, then yeah the ring makes sense as a capstone. but if you're just doing a random melee build and you stumble into this quest, you're choosing between "take an artifact you won't use" and "get nothing." that's not a choice, that's just bad quest design.

what I've noticed on modded playthroughs is that Requiem actually makes this way more interesting because it nerfs the ring's transformation into something that's situationally useful rather than a panic button, and it gives the quest more weight overall. vanilla though? honestly I'd probably just take the ring and vendor it or drop it. at least then you're not leaving an artifact on the table, even if you never use it. the RP satisfaction of freeing Sinding isn't really worth gimping your completionist instinct imo.