Summerset Isle
Mod Author: yourenotsupposedtobeinhere
Release date: 08 02 2015
Latest Version: 1.35

Summerset Isle utilizes a vast amount of resources, many of which available as free resources on nexus, the others are created by me (I am a 3d modeler) or for Summerset explicitly by other authors, or I have received permission directly from the authors. If you are interested in using content from these files you must contact me first to discuss permissions via pm on Nexus. You must get explicit permission from me to make patches for Summerset. If you wish to make a patch for this mod, please seek my permission first and let me know what it does, as it could have mod breaking effects. You must get permission from me before you are allowed to modify my files.

File credits
Summerset Team

Project Lead
yourenotsupposedtobeinhere

World Design
Lead
yourenotsupposedtobeinhere
Additional
primrosemilk

World Creation
yourenotsupposedtobeinhere

Level Design/Creation
yourenotsupposedtobeinhere

Story Design/Creation
yourenotsupposedtobeinhere
primrosemilk

Quest Design/Creation
yourenotsupposedtobeinhere

Scripting
yourenotsupposedtobeinhere

Trailer/Promotional Work
Novajam

Senior 3D model optimization
DDProductions83
Tamira

Texture optimization
Urwy
osmodius
DDProductions83

Testing
yourenotsupposedtobeinhere
primrosemilk
Tamira
NovaJam

Music Design/Creation
CaptainCreepy

Creature Design/Creation
Vicn
yourenotsupposedtobeinhere
primrosemilk

Creature Rigging
Vicn

Weapon Design/Creation
Urwy
yourenotsupposedtobeinhere

Additional Books/Writing
yourenotsupposedtobeinhere
primrosemilk

Resource Management
Halofarm

- Voice Cast -
--------------
t0nkatsu Liam

Jamie Campbell

Matthew Wade (aka Lomekian)

Robyn Rybnik

Nick Poling

Jake Bowen

Tartan Kiwi [email protected]

Krys Janae

Jessica N. Osborne

- Original Height Map Creator -
--------------
Nuke Dukem

- Special Effects Artist -
--------------
trainwiz

- Clothing -
--------------
SydneyB & Jacknifelee
zzjay
anano aka Osare
protese
Newermind43
FranklinZunge
CaBaL120
Kohdi
lautasantenni

- Statics, Meshes and Textures -
--------------
Nuska
Stroti
Tamira
DarkRider
breti
Blary
InsanitySorrow
lilith
Aiyeen
flintone
Oaristys and Tony67
Ga-Knomboe Boy
Angilla
Elinen & Ztree
Nouserher
css0101
lazyskeever
tueffelachtein
SydneyB
dimon99
Vurt
mrpdean
Kraeten
muppetpuppet
jukkz
Shigglebigglebah
KANRAx2
The_Funktasm
32cm
Nernie

- Additional Creatures -
--------------
yourenotsupposedtobeinhere
lifestorock

- Art -
--------------
primrosemilk
coupleofkooks
wakaflockaflame1

- Sounds Effects -
--------------
Jack Oughton

- Utility credits -
--------------
NifConvert
Oscape 2-4727-2-0beta6
NifUtilsSuite_v111900
MultiXwm_v2_3-3159-2-3
Blender 2.69
NifSkope 1.1.3
Audacity
Waveshop
TES5Edit

- Special Thanks -

- My beautiful girlfriend (primrosemilk) for tolerating my modding obsession, for her constant support, advice and testing.
- Bethesda Games Studios, for creating the immersive and beautiful world of Skyrim for me to lose myself in.
- Nuke Dukem for allowing me to take ownership of his original Heightmap and esp.
- Urwy, for creating beautiful custom weapons and fixing some of my mesh and UV blunders.
- CaptainCreepy for his relentless effort and incredible musical talent and suggestions.
- The Voice Cast for putting up with me pestering and retaking lines.
- Vicn for working with me to make Summerset more alive with his custom works, as well as converting many of my custom assets into creatures.
- Tamira for being a good friend through it all and her advice.
- Vurt for use of his work as well as being a long term fixture of Nexus and his advice.
- breti, CaBaL120, and KANRAx2 for allowing me to use any and all their works as resources.
- To all the voice actors who auditioned for the parts.
- And to anyone I have missed.

- Storyline -

Summerset Isle, a Skyrim expansion mod of DLC proportion, continues the story of the Arch-Mage of Winterhold when they are summoned to the land of the Altmer. Mystery and heroic fantasy with quest openness to explore, make choices, and mistakes. Your actions will have consequences. In time, learning what went wrong, and those whose lives you have touched or tainted along the way. Summerset Isle uses a lot of references from previous Elder Scrolls titles such as Oblivion, Morrowind and Daggerfall. If you are familiar with those titles than you will find many nostalgic references.

- Features -

A fun and challenging new quest arch of a Bethesda Game Studios concept in the Province of Summerset Isle.
30+ hours of game play.
60+ quests.
600+ new npc's. (not all quest related)
30+ merchants.
Fully voice acted.
A number of world spaces including Summerset Isle!
A number of potential player homes.
Unique craftable items, foods and drinks.
Unique harvestable ingredients.
Unique Buildings.
Dozens of unique creatures.
Unique travel system.
40+ Cities, Towns and Villages.
60+ caves/dungeons to explore.
A number of boss and mini-boss battles
Learn new spells from a number of schools of magic.
Over 1 hour of custom music.
Fully Navmeshed and tested (follower friendly)

- Disclaimer -

This mod does not hold your hand, not all markers will lead to quest destinations, you may have to use your map. Not all quests will have markers, you may have to listen to dialogue or read your journal for clues. Some quest progression info is written in books and journals, if you don't read the books, journals or notes, the quests will not seem cohesive. Not all quests are linear, based on how you interact in the quest can determine whether the quest fails, completes or the direction the quest goes. Some quests will not be able to be completed based on play style and choices made. Many hostiles are high level by default and level with the player making many battles life or death, companions are supported and remember, its supposed to be fun. Cheating is not recommended as it will break some quests, user discretion is advised.

- How it Starts -

Once named Arch-Mage, travel to the Frozen Hearth and speak with the courier. More help in included doc file.

- Requirements -

You must be Arch-Mage of Winterhold.
Dawnguard DLC.

- System Requirements -

Minimum VRam 1Gb (some users have reported stable game-play with as little as 512mb)
1.62 Gb Disk Space
Recommended VRam 2Gb or more
SKSE Recommended for memory patch
ENB Boost Recommended
SFO Recommended

- Installation -

Manual.
Open file in new window after in zipping.
Open computer\local disk\program files\steam\steamapps\common\skyrim\data
Move unpacked file into data folder.
Adjust it to be with your other quest mods.
Summerset needs to be above Verdant Grass in your load order.

- Incompatibles -

Mods that edit the BaseID for the Frozen Hearth Inn in Winterhold or that redirect to a different interior cell.
Mods that give the title of Arch-Mage to someone else, (unless the title for Arch-Mage was not given to someone else)
Messy load orders.
Frostfall needs to have Fast Travel enabled initially for Summerset to work. Frostfall 1.35 and higher is supported but only in Summerset Isle, meaning, You must enable fast travel prior to speaking to the courier, but you are free to disable it after you are teleported to Summerset Isle.
Mods that allow the player to fly are not recommended as many quests expect the player to not be able to fly.
Verdant Grass (The Misc plugin is designed for use with Summerset Isle, but it modifies VERDANT. That means these changes WILL AFFECT SKYRIM TOO. If you don't like the results, be sure to deactivate it when not needed. Make sure this plugin is loaded AFTER Verdant, and that Verdant is loaded AFTER Summerset Isle. If your Verdant is too FPS heavy delete the INI that is included with the Verdant patch)
ESMifying the esp is not recommended or supported.

- FAQ -

Q - Is it lore friendly?
A - I didn't make it to be lore friendly, or not lore friendly, it is what it is.

Q - Why is it primarily loose files?
A - It runs the smoothest and is most stable with the current structure.

Q: I CTD at Meutaniil, why?
A: You need to have a proper load order, not just Summerset Isle. This may take you a bit of time if your load order is messy. See Forum tab CTD for more info.

Q: I don't have the minimum requirements, can I still play it?
A: Some users reported 756mb and even 512mb being playable, but that was based on other mods they used.

Q: Can I skip the College quest-line? I just want to go there to take picture and explore.
A: Not recommended, but I can't stop you. I don't recommend it because Summerset Isle was not tested with cheating in mind and any abnormalities, bugs or things that seem unfinished can not be properly supported by myself. If you insist on cheating to get there. please use the appropriate forum tab Cheater's Paradise to prevent others from being spoiled.

Q: Why did you delete my comment?
A: Either I moved it because it was a spoiler to an appropriate tab or because it was rude to other members. I won't delete comments that I may not agree with unless it is detrimental to others.

Q: Why is it so bright/dark?
A: It is literally impossible to cater to everyone's tastes with lighting as everyone has different settings and ENB plays a big factor. I tried to pick an even ground from reports from play-testing.

Q: Why did you make it with no quest markers?
A: I did make it with quest markers, however, some quests do not have them. For example, if a quest is to find a place based on dialogue, it would not be challenging to find it if I show you where it is. Other quests that have hard to find items I have quest markers to help locate the item.

Q: Why am I forced to read books and journals?
A: You're not. If you are stuck on a quest, your quest log will have suggestions for what you should do, you may need to read it for guidance if you are not sure. Also, the books, journals and notes are there to enrich the story. If you choose not to read you may miss some elements of the story.

Q: Why is fast travel required?
A: It is a core element of the game. It is used for many things. Summerset Isle uses it in similar ways and some quests are reliant upon it.

Q: Why didn't you answer my question?
A: I try to answer all questions, however, I have limited time. My general rule for answering questions is that if it was already asked, it is low priority, see if it was already asked and answered please. This will give me more time to help with other things and give me more time to make updates where needed, which helps everyone. Some users may ask questions but did not read the sticky, description or the readme, I will direct them to what they missed.

Q - Why are there no roads? You're lazy!
A - There are paths, much like Vvardenfell. Morrowind's primary means of travel through out Vvardenfell was through teleportation, no need for roads, same applies to Summerset Isle. This was a design choice when making considerations on world building at both the macro and micro scale. If I was lazy I wouldn't have manually navmeshed over 10000 cells.

Q - Why are some of the buildings made out of cheese?
A - They are not, but you are most likely referring to the coral kit. I struggled with getting a texture to look like coral, I was unhappy with this texture but during playtesting, the majority of the testers liked it so I left it in. Some people like to complain, my reply to those people, if you don't like it, do better. Instead of complaining, help. Unfortunately most people, like me, are not supremely gifted in texture work, but the door is open if you want to contribute, just send me a pm.

Q - Why does one person's game look beautiful and another's look really bad?
A - I made Summerset Isle to utilize core elements of Skyrim, even though many assets are custom, Summerset can look vastly different from one persons set-up to another. I made this decision because while it may not look the best on some users systems, if you have an amazing set-up it will only compliment the land and look fantastic and will only improve with time, automatically.

Q - Where are all the NPCs?
A - Every civilised location has people in it. Some locations the people are more social and spend time with each other. Some places they will keep to themselves. Everyone sleeps. If you enter a location and it is nighttime, expect that the people are sleeping. If it is daytime, most people have something they want to do based on the time frame. if you are exploring the open world expecting to find random NPCs with quests you will be disappointed. I developed Summerset Isle to be similar to Vvardenfell travel wise, but more dangerous. I have also included load screens and dialogue to support the reasons to why this was done.

Q - Why are all the quests fetchy?
A - I wrote the quests. I have never written quests before, not scripted anything prior to Summerset Isle. I actually learned how to script over a weekend just so that I could make quests and finish the mod. Some of the quests might seem fetchy. Sometimes it was intended, sometimes it was unavoidable based on the story I wrote. Baring in mind that I do not have history in scripting, I am quite proud of myself for learning what was needed to have quests that wouldn't break. I have had to eliminate 10 quests on the current build due to the unpredictable nature of the Creation kit. Some of those quests I was very proud of as well and would like to at some point to have restore. 25% of the quests in Summerset Isle are fetch quests.

Q - You copy pasted all the house interiors, why didn't you take more time to make them unique?
A - A lived in home is possible to achieve, baring in mind that a well done interior for a home would take a minimum of a day to complete, I have made a design choice to not have all non-crucial interiors custom. The decision was based on one factor, time. It would take me approximately 2 years to custom craft all 600+ house interiors on top of the 2.5 years making Summerset. As I am solely responsible for the design of the world I made a choice to release 2 years earlier at the sacrifice of non-quested, non-crucial interiors.

Q - Will I break any quests if I go off exploring in dungeons?
A - No. I designed the dungeons to all be explored at anytime (without cheats) and to not interfere with any quests. Be sure to have version 1.35 or higher.

Q - What were your inspirations?
A - I took inspiration from many sources while making Summerset Isle. Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout New Vegas, some youtubers, the modding community. I played many quest and world mods to find out what I liked and I didn't like about them. One thing I never liked was feeling trapped, so a big part of my focus was having the player free to explore and to return to Skyrim, but having to do one quest to be able to get back.

Q - Who made Summerset Isle?
A - Summerset Isle as seen on Nexus was built and conceptualized by myself. Along the way, others have offered their services to the aid in completion to Summerset. For me, anyone that devoted any time to help the project was added to the team, be that voice actors, testers, composer or creature rigging. I think it is important to recognize those that helped me as Summerset Isle would not be what it is without the help I received.