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About this mod
Arkanys is a sprawling, lore-friendly city that has been added to the North East coast on the
border between Skyrim and Morrowind. It includes many other new areas and quests.
- Permissions and credits
- Changelogs
This is an Early Release, meaning there may be bugs, performance issues, and some missing features. Please make clean saves before installing and see
"What does Early Release mean?" section.
"What does Early Release mean?" section.
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Arkanys is a sprawling, lore-friendly city that has been added to the North East coast on the
border between Skyrim and Morrowind. It includes many other new areas and quests.
Location of the city
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________border between Skyrim and Morrowind. It includes many other new areas and quests.
Location of the city
| LORE |
On the frigid northern coast of Skyrim lies an ancient metropolis – Arkanys. Few know of its origins, but many speculate that the Dwemer were involved in the city’s founding, a theory which is supported by the extensive ruins that lie below. Arkanys’ allegiance has always been questioned, due in part to its location (neither completely in Skyrim or Morrowind). Still, its influence is undeniable. Its vast ports and unique location have cemented Arkanys as a reliable and prosperous trading location. Travelers from all across Tamriel have visited this great fortress of stone, but it has fallen into difficult times.
A Thalmor captain disregarded official orders to peacefully gain influence of the city. His attack was swift and effective, but he failed to gain control of the entire city. With the capital under his control, the city’s fate is uncertain. Arkanys’ original inhabitants have banded together under the rule of the city steward, who leads a group of independent, nationalistic Nords against the Thalmor. The two sides have exchanged several blows, but the worst is yet to come.
Imperial ambassadors were allegedly ‘mistakenly’ fired upon by Nord sentries, leading to the first major battle for Arkanys. This fight left countless ships destroyed in the sea and bodies strewn about across the land. The Nords claim that they only want to settle their dispute with the Thalmor, but their actions may have proven otherwise. All three groups sit at a standstill: the Nords plotting to regain the city, the Thalmor hoping to crush the resistance, and the Imperials searching for a way to end the conflict - by any means necessary. If help doesn’t come soon, Tamriel may lose one of its oldest landmarks, and gain one of its bloodiest conflicts yet.
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| FEATURES |
- A massive, 2-part city with 8 districts
- Over 100 unique houses
- Over 250 new, unique NPC's with daily schedules
- Brand new shops, businesses, and merchants
- Mercenaries for hire and new followers
- New faction/gang with their own HQ and quests
- A huge, multi part dungeon (last section is bugged and may not work properly)
- New caves, shipwrecks and hidden areas to explore
- New quests and unique items
Distant LOD is not included in this file. That means that parts of the city that are far away will be invisible until you get close, then suddenly pop up. I will fix this for the Final Release, but it's really not important enough to worry about now.
Unfortunately, the only guard voice available to me was the Nord Guard voice, which wouldn’t work for Thalmor guards. This means that Nord guards will speak correctly but Thalmor guards may have slightly different dialogue than most guards.
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| WHAT DOES EARLY RELEASE MEAN? |
Everything mentioned in the section above is included, with the exception of quests and NPC dialogue (those will come in the Final Release). The purpose of the Early Release is for people to playtest and for me to see what people do and don't like about the mod. During this testing period, I'll be working on the questlines, dialogue, and possible voice acting.
The city hall and citadel interior will NOT be included in the early release because the former is huge, and including it would delay the release by a lot and the latter is more quest related. Additionally, Magmaspire Catacombs is experiencing some VERY bad bugs on my end, but it may work on other machines. Be prepared for it to not work if you enter that area.
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| COMPATIBILITY - VERY IMPORTANT|
- Here There Be Monsters MAY conflict with Arkanys (giant Dwemer spider spawns at docks)
- Watchtowers has a compatibility issue (city wall goes through tower, I'll try to fix this)
- WARZONES 2015 is compatible ONLY WITH THIS CONSOLE COMMAND:
Before you enter the MT PAIN/Arkanys area (ie don't load the gameCells yet), enter console and type:
set WZonesSelectMtPain to 0
Presto! Next time you're in the area, all of the WARZONES TESTING AREA called MT PAIN will be disabled.
- Folkstean and the border of Hammerfell MAY be incompatible (waiting to hear more info)
There may be some conflicts with other mods, but there shouldn't be too many. I made sure to build Arkanys mostly outside of the game's playable area to minimize compatibility issues. Let me know if you find any more.
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| PERFORMANCE |
Arkanys is huge. From the ground level, you should be able to play at an acceptable framerate. However, if you're doing any flying/looking down at the whole city from above for whatever reason, you will lag. Arkanys was built on a mid-range machine (think gtx750ti), and certain parts lag for me. I have optimized as much as I can without removing too much content, but I may release a 'light' version if a lot of people are having performance issues.
If you can barely run vanilla Skyrim due to performance issues, you probably can't run this mod at a playable framerate.
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| INSTALL |
YOU MUST MAKE THIS EDIT OR THE MOD WILL NOT BE PLAYABLE
Because Arkanys is partially outside of the playable map (where you hit an invisible wall saying "You cannot go that way"), you have to make an edit to your Skyrim.ini. To do so:
1. Go to Skyrim directory, by default - C:\Users\your_username\Documents\My Games\Skyrim\
2. Find and open - Skyrim.ini
3. Paste in under 'General' section - bBorderRegionsEnabled=0
4. Save file - That's it!
This mod requires no DLC or other files. Everything added in is from the base game. To install, simply click "Download with manager" or manually download (see readme.txt for manual install).
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| FUTURE PLANS |
For the Final Release, I am planning to have:
- Fully voice-acted NPC's with complete dialogue
- Numerous quests (only really important one is the main storyline, others will be smaller side quests)
- Fully finished interiors
- I may add in the sewer system I had originally planned, along with the inhabitants that reside there
- Possible player home(s)
If I make any small updates or compatibility patches I will release those before the Final Release. My blog will have more info.