Could not be fucked to search 80~ pages to see if already posted.

Cover of:

Tale of Tongues

The Dragonborn Comes

Age of Aggression

Age of Oppression

Skyrim Theme (Dovahkiin)

Morrowind/Skyrim Mashup

 

Already posted. Worth reposting.

 

I'd post a picture of my current character, except at the moment I'm running the game on a computer without a graphics card, so I'm forced to use the absolute lowest visual settings. The game runs smoothly, but looks like turd. It's especially irksome because I'm used to playing with ENBs and texture mods. Bah.

Anyway, I'm currently playing two characters, both of which I think are pretty awesome.

The first one is a true Nord, cut in the fashion of the Tongues of old. Noteworthy elements of this build: Stalhrim Light Armor, Bloodskal Blade, Dragonbone Greatsword, Talos amulet and blessing, Ritual Stone, necromancy, and cryomancy. Most used shouts would probably be Become Ethereal (useful to ensure that I get the first hit with the Bloodskal Blade), and Elemental Fury (to make my Legendary Dragonbone Greatsword into a weapon of mass destruction).

The other is an Altmer avatar of Auriel. Ancient Falmer Armor, Auriel's Shield and Bow, Dawnbreaker, Restoration magic, and a great appreciation for the Slow Time shout (since Auriel is an aspect of the Time Dragon).

Definitely been having fun with these builds.

 

It's been over two months, you say. The last time this thread was alive, people were actually posting pictures of their characters out of sheer boredom, you say. We all know Bethesda is too busy recreating World of Warcraft and not making Fallout 4 to do anything with The Elder Scrolls, so what could you possibly have to bump this thread about, you say.

And to that, I say shut the fuck up and stop being a doubting Thomas, before I beat you to death with a cactus and feed your carcass to my brood of wolf puppies.

I'm bumping the thread to make you aware of a particular mod project. Doubtless, you've heard of Skywind, and if you haven't, what the actual fuck are you doing with yourself, but on the off chance that you haven't, it's a mod that seeks to recreate the entire game of Morrowind, every quest, every location, every spell, and every NPC and monster, using the Skyrim engine. In essence, it would be a mod for Skyrim that turns Skyrim into Morrowind.

This is not that sort of mod.

Why? Because mods like Skywind, like Morrowblivion before it, are, in essence, game replacers. They are both basically a mod that, when applied to a game, overwrites that game and replaces it with another one.

But what if you didn't want to replace Skyrim? What if you wanted to travel to Morrowind as it exists in the Fourth Era, the age of the Dragonborn? What if you wanted to walk over the mountains into Cyrodiil, or hop on a boat and take a trip to Valenwood or Elswyre? What if you weren't interested in playing an old game with a new engine, but wanted to see the rest of the world as it exists right now in the story?

Guess what bitches?

There's a mod for that.

I'd like to introduce you all to a little project called Beyond Skyrim. Remember how, way back when Skyrim first came out and people got their hands on it, they talked about how amazing it is that the developers basically gave us the entire landmass of Tamriel inside the game, albeit in an unrendered state? And how it was clearly an invitation to mod in new areas? Remember being slightly disappointed in the back of your mind that nothing ever really came of it?

Be disappointed no more, because these crazy, magnificent bastards decided to fill in the whole thing.

Like, all of it.

Beyond Skyrim is not only the most ambitious project to ever be undertaken by any Elder Scrolls modders, it may very well be the most extensive and ambitious modding project to ever be undertaken ever by anyone anywhere. Beyond Skyrim seeks nothing less than to add in the entire rest of the world of Tamriel to Skyrim as it would exist in the Fourth Era timeline, i.e. the era of the Dragonborn, and fill that world with fully voiced NPCs, lore-compliant quests, new items, culturally accurate weapons and armor, monsters and creatures both nostalgically familiar and wholly new, new factions, new guilds, an entirely new soundtrack for each region, and an overarching core questline that covers the ramifications of the Dovakiin leaving Skyrim and wandering the wider world at a time when the Thalmor are pushing for war and Dragons have reawakened in the world.

This project is so massive that it is actually being undertaken by multiple modding teams, each approximately the size of the singular team that is working on Skywind currently. Each team is assigned to a single providence of Tamriel, and will be working in collaboration with the other teams to make culturally and visually distinct puzzle pieces that all fit together into a cohesive, coherent interactive world.

"That's all well and good Lord Raine," you say, "but isn't this all a long way off? I mean, they still aren't totally sure when Skywind will be coming out, probably not any time this year, and that's a far less ambitious project than this. Won't the next Fallout game be out and be old news by the time any of this is relevant?"

A fair question, person who has yet to be beaten to death with a cactus and fed to wolves. A fair question to which I cheerfully respond with a resounding 'nope.' It's totally relevant.

Why?

Because the modders in charge of Cyrodiil have decided that waiting around for all of the individual providences to be released is for shitters and quitters, which is why they'll be releasing Beyond Skyrim: Cyrodiil Bruma this summer to show off what they're doing, and give players a taste of the Dovakiin's main quest in the providence of Cyrodiil, which just so coincidentally happens to be called The Seat of Sundered Kings, and will be namedropped in the final version of the Cyrodiil part of the mod as Beyond Skyrim: Cyrodiil, The Seat of Sundered Kings.

Now, I'm not telling you that the main quest for Cyrodiil would look like a hybrid mix between the metaplot for Game of Thrones and the more recent spoilers for Shingeki no Kyojin. That would be baseless speculation and outright conjecture.

But it is called The Seat of Sundered Kings.

Because if Bethesda won't make a good Elder Scrolls game, we'll goddamn do it ourselves. In fact, we'll make eight of them, and hook them all up together like a giant video game Voltron, because fuck you and fuck the police.

Congratulations on not being hit in the face with a cactus. You're still on thin ice with the wolves, though.

 

My god. They should have sent a poet.

 

So yeah, I saw that Gopher put up a video on youtube about this with his weird narrating for it and I gotta say that Lord Raine does a better job up getting me excited for it.

I really seriously hope that they involve the Thalmor because Skyrim hardly did shit with them. Like, what, the biggest quest with them was the Thalmor dinner party? Really hope that they'll give us a chance to grind they're faces in. I want to ride a goddamn dragon while roasting a bitched-faced Thalmor army.

Either way this sounds really impressive and I hope that all goes well for the people doing this.

 

Bruma? Yay.

 

Lord Raine, what you said is awesome, true. But one thing. Morrowind had the same mod running for itself and nothing really came out of it expect for one landmass with some quests. How will this be any different?

 

It may not be. It's entirely possible that Beyond Skyrim will collapse in on itself.

But then, Beyond Skyrim is also moving a lot faster than that particular Morrowind mod ever did, to my recollection. We're actually going to have something playable by this summer. Worst case scenario, production stops in two years and we get half a dozen new places to travel to.

The team working on it seems motivated, and they're actually producing results in a timely manner. That's more than can be said for nearly every other concerted effort to create the entirety of Tamriel that I can remember.

 

Oh hey, that sounds great. Considering that you kept using the word 'we', I am going to assume that you know a great deal about the mod. How will the mod handle alternative mods like Skyre/Requiem?

 

I was assuming he meant we as in the public, 'we will have something playable by this summer,' if Bruma comes out.

While this sounds awesome and I truly wish to see it to fruition, my odds are against it. Something this massive being completed? At the minimum it will take years, and more than likely somewhere along the way it will collapse.

However if they release in parts like Lord Raine said, it should be awesome. I never played before Morrowind, so looking foward to exploring Tamriel at it's fullest. Fingers crossed.

 

Seriously Raine, how the hell have you not been hired by bethesda for marketing yet? Every time I turn around in a board you seem to find some way to get my hyped up again for a game, whether it be Skyrim or Xcom a few months back. Go market yourself to them god damn it so I can imagine you in a room doing some bizarre Gurren Lagann impression to motivate the ESO team into making the game we all want!

 

I've recently started playing Dark Souls for the first time, and it made me realize just how much I hope that Bethesda manages to improve combat in their next Elder Scrolls installment. While I don't think the difficulty of something like Dark Souls necessarily is something the Elder Scrolls series needs(though I would be seriously excited if it was included) it would be nice if combat felt more interesting, instead of L2/R2 spam. I've always loved the atmosphere of the world in Elder Scrolls games, and honestly I think the combat system is one of the few areas they can improve on.

Also, after 400+ hours of Skyrim, I think Dark Souls has finally broken me of it. Temporarily, anyway. We'll see if that lasts.

 

So, how many of you are still playing this game in 2015? I recently came into possession of a decent gaming PC, and after installing a ton of mods, I've got the game operating just how I like it. For the most part, that means plenty of graphical enhancements as well as combat difficulty adjustments. And above all Perkus Maximus.

With Mod Organizer, you can easily switch between custom mod profiles for each character, so depending on which race and build I play, I run a different suite of mods. If you're still using Nexus Mod Manager, stop and go figure out how to use Mod Organizer. It is glorious.

In my opinion, Skyrim is still a great game today, thanks largely to the modding community. With an ENB and HD re-textures, the game looks competitive alongside modern releases, though the physics engine sure could be better.

As for what I still find enjoyable about the game, well, I have three characters that I regularly play. Getting into their mindset and creating a good backstory for them is where most of the fun is for me. Skyrim itself is grandiose in scope, but the fact that it's just a small part of a massive world with a rich history is even better. There's so much potential for storytelling in Skyrim that I seldom find myself getting tired of it. It also really annoys me that there aren't many good fics in this fandom, considering the ridiculous levels of awesome it could reach.

If you guys still play and have some favourite characters, would you mind showing a screenshot and/or describing them a little?

I'll start.

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Hrikvar – a Nord Vampire Lord born under the sign of the Ritual, he was named 'Stormblade' by Jarl Ulfric, succeeded Savos Aren as Arch-Mage of the College of Winterhold, and earned a place of honour in Coldharbour by his services to Molag Bal. He wears Dukaan's mask, the Gauldur Amulet, the Archmage's Robes, the Ring of the Erudite, Stalhrim Light Bracers of Peerless Wielding, and Stalhrim Light Boots of Fire Suppression. He wields the Mace of Molag Bal and keeps it charged with souls from the Black Star. His spell hand is mostly used to reanimate the dead and freeze living victims. He doesn't often bring a follower with him, but Serana would be the most likely choice.

​

Vaden – a Dunmer zealot born under the sign of the Steed, he is thrice-blessed by the Reclamations, as each of the Princes have granted him one of their artifacts: Azura's Star, Mephala's Ebony Blade, and Boethiah's Ebony Mail. His gear also includes the Locket of Saint Jiub, a Ring of the Peerless Knight, an Ebony Chainmail Hood (added by a mod, just for the aesthetics), an Ebony Helmet of Extreme Destruction (for difficult fights), Ebony Gauntlets of Extreme Sure Grip, Ebony Boots of Fire Abatement, and an Ebony Dagger of the Inferno (for stealth kills). He is usually accompanied by other Dunmer such as Aranea Ienith, Jenassa, or Teldryn Sero.

​

Andarion the Raptor - Altmer paladin, avatar of Auri-El, champion of Meridia, Legate in the Imperial Legion, and hero of the Dawnguard. He wears a full set of doubly-enchanted Ancient Falmer Armor (the enchantments being: Fortify Restoration, Fortify Light Armor, Fortify Archery, Fortify Block, Fortify One-Handed, and Resist Frost). He also dons the Aetherial Crown (The Lord + The Lady), a Silver Necklace (Resist Disease and Fortify Magicka Regen) and a Silver Ring (Resist Magicka and Fortify Magicka). He possesses Auriel's Shield and Bow, a quiver full of Sunhallowed Elven Arrows, and Meridia's Dawnbreaker. Against undead hordes he is quite unstoppable. The usual followers are other members of the Dawnguard.

 

I kind of stopped playing after I made Arlan, but tinkering around with some other characters not directly involved in the Dragon War could be cool. I like all three you made, though the third one looks a bit derpy.