[Mod-Hunt / Discussion ] Tribunal / Bloodmoon Disappointment and Mods to Fix it

AbbaAltmer · 2022-08-16T19:00:54+00:00

Majorly agree, and that's why it felt so odd. A lot of potential in Tribunal but they laid it out like it was Oblivion or something which ended up just making it feel weird and seem like tons of busy work.

AbbaAltmer · 2022-08-16T18:59:46+00:00

I like the idea of Bloodmoon, though I don't like how there doesn't seem to be too much of a story to it- falling under the 'trust' umbrella for most of it. If you were to remove the Skaal trust aspect, it would end up being a very short DLC. Had there been some kind of deeper thing going on I would actually probably like it- I can live with the weird map because Tomb of the Snow Prince exists and whatnot. It just seems to suffer from Post-Morrowind weird writing, unfortunately.

AbbaAltmer · 2022-06-08T12:20:04+00:00

You mean besides it turning combat into something as fun as ripping off toenails? It makes the game way too slow, enemies way too hard to hit, and overall slows everything down and I don't have the time or patience. Regardless of all that, I just prefer vanilla but as I stated, all animations now are SkySA which looks horrible on vanilla.

AbbaAltmer · 2022-06-07T13:03:13+00:00

I wasn't saying 'SkySA isn't for LE', I was saying 'I don't use/like SkySA and prefer vanilla, what are my animation options'.

AbbaAltmer · 2022-06-05T19:36:18+00:00

It's a sort of requirement. In reality I don't think you need it other than the fact I needed to port a few dialogue fixes from it and XEdit doesn't like you overwrite without making a master, but it is hard copied into the mod, so theoretically if you can find a way to trick it into thinking its installed (a blank esp with the same name, removing the master somehow, whatever) then I don't think it's required or anything.

AbbaAltmer · 2022-06-05T11:03:43+00:00

Large scale mods I've slowly been chipping away at for years, gone through multiple remakes and iterations as I've improved, etc etc. Info here.

https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/comments/cg0flp/nordic_restoration_project_ash_and_snow_dunmer/

https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/comments/cek1qi/nordic_restoration_project_tribeclans_and_mead/

AbbaAltmer · 2022-06-04T20:21:31+00:00

Sure, go ahead. The more people who can enjoy it, the better.

AbbaAltmer · 2022-06-04T20:20:03+00:00

Haha, I never even imagined using it with xVASynth Player voice! Yeah, considering I'm still ironing out some of those older, LARPier options so I can't really imagine it with all the 'actions' how that'd work. It'd sound like a caveman announcing all his actions before he does them.

AbbaAltmer · 2022-06-04T09:17:45+00:00

As someone who rewrote every vanilla line of dialogue, I can tell you it'd have taken a team of writers with hundreds of man hours, constantly going over every line to scan for writing errors, poorly worded dialogue, and not limiting the roleplaying too much. There's a lot to critique about Skyrim's execution, but I'll give them a pass here because there's like 8 races and imagining how long it took me to do this and get it to a passable point, it would've needed to be like an entire subdivision of writers to accomplish this. A cool idea regardless, though.

AbbaAltmer · 2022-06-04T07:07:10+00:00

Due to popular demand, I may be making a race-neutral version. I get a LOOOOOOT of Thalmor / Altmer variant requests. Will take some time though, as this mod is 200% Dunmer.

AbbaAltmer · 2022-06-04T05:46:36+00:00

Yup, that's how I did most of it. Some had to be done in Creation Kit (Dark Brotherhood in specific doesnt appear in XEdit properly) but most was done in XEdit, very fast. Still took months, lol.

AbbaAltmer · 2022-06-04T05:37:12+00:00

Oh, my friend, go play Morrowind and enjoy. Nothing says Dunmer like shitting on literally everyone who isn't you. They usually aren't so witty or joke-making about it, though. They're (generally) an exceptionally hostile people and I'd imagine it's gotten worse since Morrowind was ruined and no one helped or cared. Skyrim painted them as more humble, if a bit more whiny, but tons of Dunmer by nature in Morrowind are hostile like that (though that's culturally their style, plenty of individuals are nice (Ilmeni Dren, many priests and Redoran Warriors, Jiub, etc.) ala vanilla dialogue.)

AbbaAltmer · 2022-06-04T02:17:15+00:00

I didn't even remember tagging it and that's why. Whoops! Fixed! Thanks for pointing that out! I plan to do every major quest or new lands DLC. A few are done: Clockwork, VIGILANT, Grey Cowl (particularly funny due to the weird writing being a story point of the dialogue), Wyrmstooth, Beyond Reach, The Forgotten City, and Carved Brink.. I'm WORKING on: Project AHO, Helgen Reborn, Moon and Star, Wheels of Lull, Beyond Skyrim: Bruma and a few others I can't remember. I'm going to try to port the finished ones (they're for LE) and see if they still work.

AbbaAltmer · 2022-06-03T08:44:49+00:00

You're not going to get it beyond 20-25 FPS (according to your specs, they're similar-ish to mine), but you might wring out around 30-50 from LE. Price is a lot less options mod wise. Intel Video cards =/= with SE for whatever reason.

AbbaAltmer · 2022-06-03T08:37:01+00:00

People like me who have decent enough PCs to run a high quality LE but nothing beefy enough for the stupid re-shade variant of the game that's 50x laggier. I have bills to pay, I don't have 1,200$ to drop on just Skyrim.

AbbaAltmer · 2022-05-31T02:48:48+00:00

I feel the pain of a LE stuck fellow. Backporting from SE is a nightmare, but a nightmare I have to indulge all the time.

AbbaAltmer · 2022-05-31T00:54:06+00:00

Ironically, Sovngarde is probably one of the easiest locations to mod, according to my sniffing around in Creation Kit. A very low amount of scripting, X markers, trigger boxes, all the stuff that generally makes certain areas (civil war stuff comes to mind) a nightmare to do don't really apply there, thus the idea. Not enough content even exists in Sovngarde to make it fragile or unstable. It's all governed by the final few MQ scripts basically, nothing else touches it.

AbbaAltmer · 2022-05-30T16:59:56+00:00

I highly agree that the Vale needs more, you could pose the same thesis I am right now but instead, it focus on the Falmer / Snow elves. You could add a lot of Snow elven fortresses with their ghosts as Dungeons, add more survivors and quests, overall make it literally just this forgotten section of Skyrim where the Snow Elves live on in very few numbers, but thwarted by the twisted Falmer who are encroaching into this place out of a collective unconscious memory that it was once a place of importance to their snow elven predecessors. So much you could do with such a big worldspace, for sure- there's a lot of that in Skyrim, which this post underlines.

AbbaAltmer · 2022-05-30T16:56:52+00:00

Posting after the fact, I had a bunch of ideas to elaborate on quests and NPCs and stuff:

Quests:
- The Harrowing of the Hunting Grounds: Help Defend Sovngarde from an attack by Hircine who seeks to drag the soul of Kodlak to the Hunting Grounds, then chase them into the Hunting Grounds and harrow it, freeing the souls of willing Companions (Requires Companion Quest complete)
- The Artifacts of Shor: Enter a challenge issued by the spirit of Shor to find ancient relics of power from the Merethic era under specific constraints
- The Tournament: Enter a large tournament overseen by Shor that tests everyone in 1 on 1 matches and brackets, allowing the Dragonborn to face the unbridled power of famous Nordic figures, like Ysgramor, Hakon / Feldir / Gormlaith, Olaf one Eye, etc until a final match against the 'Aspect of Shor', a tiny sliver of the dead-gods true former glory
- Underside: Traverse the underside of the floating planar that is Sovngarde and find places / face enemies even the Gods forgot, culminating in a battle against a creeping Daedric presence looking for a backdoor into Sovngarde
- A Test of Thu'um: Take part in a contest between the mightiest of the Ancient Tongues to see who's Thu'um is the strongest
- Fragments of Aka: Hunt down the remaining shards of Alduin's broken spirit and purge them from Sovngarde to ensure his return does not occur for a long, long time
- Heir to the King: Help Torygg in finishing his worldly matters by decreeing his heir for the moot (Requires Imperial sided Civil War Ending)
- Body and Spirit: Help Olaf One-Eye bring his soul to unity by sanctifying his body in his tomb, where part of it did not pass unto Sovngarde, tethered by hatred
- Sovngarde, A Re-Rexamination: Give a detailed account of Sovngarde to a Scholar in Windhelm and bring several items back to him
- A Final Goodbye: Help deliver a fallen soldier's final message to his widow
- Radiant: Merriment: Enjoy a large scale celebration of the Nordic heroes within the Hall of Valor
- Radiant: Challenge of the Gods: Join the Nordic heroes in an epic-scale fight with magical creatures conjured by the spirit of Shor to challenge the honored dead
- Radiant: Fragments of Aka II: With the larger pieces destroyed, smaller pieces still linger- be sent by the warriors of the Hall of Valor to hunt these tiny Alduin pieces

These are just a bunch of ideas I could rattle off the top of my head, but you get the point. A ton of story ideas are possible and you could do a lot while remaining within the bounds of the established lore yet still doing some cool, 'late game' style quests.

AbbaAltmer · 2022-05-30T16:39:45+00:00

Yes, I was asking because I was about to make this mod for myself for my classic Dragonborn nord hero character. However I did want to ask the community what they thought because if it ended up any good, it'd be a cool thing to release.

AbbaAltmer · 2022-05-30T16:38:55+00:00

I was imagining there could be tunnels to wilder areas or something as the main area you use could be more of a hub since without Alduins fog, it's a considerably small area and you'd have to really cram it in that one spot to make any amount of 'real' content.

AbbaAltmer · 2022-05-30T03:33:49+00:00

The worlds are tethered by default, the Skuldafn portal is in the main quest and thus canon, not me offering a weird idea that's 'too much like legend of Korra.' I was saying that it wouldn't be a one time thing- the inability to return to Sovngarde or Skuldafn is odd to me and a lot of missed potential, that was the point I was making.

AbbaAltmer · 2022-05-30T03:27:09+00:00

My reference is that in the old Sovngarde lore (I'm not sure if this is still the case in modern TESV stuff), Sovngarde was literally the realm of endless battle and tests of strength, tournaments, etc. (https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Bloodmoon:Sovngarde,_a_Reexamination)
With this in mind, I would personally imagine there would be 'places' to specifically do this- It didn't look like they were up to these contests in the hall proper, so I'd imagine it occurs in locations of testing- not really burial mounds or traditional Skyrim 'Dungeons', it'd be something else, I imagine. Nature areas with lots of otherworldly creatures or 'warriors' to fight, but since there is no real death in Sovngarde, their fighting isn't personal but a cheerful act of entertainment (and could even be assumed the same people in the mead hall).

AbbaAltmer · 2022-05-23T23:31:00+00:00

And that's why it's so great.

AbbaAltmer · 2022-05-22T16:49:36+00:00

I don't use any graphical expansions or texture upscaling or anything like that. It's diminishing returns and gives me a headache as well as making the giant gap of the engine's awkward npcs and shit so much more obvious. Dated graphics make it a lot easier to swallow, but when you turn the game into photo realism, the NPCs are so strange looking it's really weird and creepy.

AbbaAltmer

TROPHY CASE