Having spent the last 30 mins desperately trying to fight the "final boss" and finally finding a strategy that for some reason worked. I'd like to share my thoughts.
Overall, the mod is very cool. The theming of the new magics is really interesting, though I feel many of the quests in the mod would not have been possible if I did not have other magic mods installed. I required spells to teleport myself across what I assumed were supposed to be nearly impossible platforming sections and of coruse some way to mitigate or negate fall damage entirely.
Touching on the actual final boss. The game is *wholly* unclear about what you are supposed to do in order to beat this cosmic being. No magic seems to work on him, regardless of what element or if it was from the mod or not. Being a casting only character this posed quite the problem. My only recommendation is to prepare ahead of time for this boss with some kind of strategy in hand, which if you're looking in this comment section probably means you're already fighting him and didn't do that. MY method of beating him was that I held up a very powerful ward spell, and used a perk from ordinator that prevented him from regenning magicka when I was within 25ft of him. I "Survived" with the ward spell long enough that began to try to punch me (Doing like 1 damage), and then I simpy conjured some beasties to kill him while I played defense
Overall, a very cool mod, but with the niche uses of the spells, inaccessible quests, and downright infurating boss fight I find this very difficult to recommend to anyone
EDIT: I was curious, so I dropped difficulty down to novice and reloaded the autosave it gives you in the boss fight. Just to see if I could figure out what mechanic I was missing.... turns out, this MASSIVE man of a final boss, has a hitbox of: His feet. As someone who was playing in third person and using true directional movement, I tried locking on and apparently that was the wrong play. He is NOT immune to magic, he simply has a small hitbox
Im kinda stuck. I already have reached 90 in destruction skill and 1000 alignement with Ilmasi and nothing happens. Besides i already finished the quest on "Jenedusil Shrine" and already completed the stage that says "Explore the Untimes". Idk what else to do. Excuse my english
What should I do in the cave temple? I understand that I have to interact with one statue, but when I do that nothing happens. I'm stuck in this mission.
I've used this mod before and it's pretty neat. Haven't touched it in a while. Decided to load it up again for a new sort of dark mage playthrough I've been running. Never really had any major complaints. Obviously, the mod's not being supported anymore so I'd consider this more of a disclaimer for anyone looking to play it.
There's one quest relatively early on when you have to absorb the first Luminous Skyshard. At one point you have to jump down into a pit to get a key from a corpse. The only way back up is to perfectly align yourself with this weird chandelier on the ground and activate it so it lets out some kind of pulse and knocks you back up to the ledge you jumped down from. It's not remotely intuitive, though. So unless you want to be fiddling with it for an hour, mods that let you fly/levitate, super jump, or point-teleport are handy at that part. Later, in the same mission, you need to get a body down from a platform to get the journal it has, among other things. Getting it isn't the most intuitive thing in the world but if you just cast enough explosive spells at it, it'll eventually just fall down or at least sleep enough that you can drag it the rest of the way and carry on. (sidenote: I dunno if this was me "cheating" or not, but there's this big chasm at the start of that dungeon. I got across it by using Whirlwind Sprint, which is the only possible vanilla way to get across it, but it may be you're actually supposed to drop down it. If so, I can't help with anything at the bottom of that as I skipped it in both playthroughs.)
The next Skyshard you have to get (an underwater Snow Elf temple), there aren't really any puzzles, just challenges. Avoid getting hit by the thing on the ceiling in the first major room. In the next room you just have to survive for a while.
Getting all the other Sky Shards is pretty straightforward. No recommendations or anything there.
When you get to the quest "A Message To The Orphans," you're gonna have a bad time if your load order is really graphics intensive. It is one of the single most tedious and annoying things I've played in a good while (and, frankly, even completely removed from it being a pain with graphics-intensive load orders, like... I just don't get why it's here? That could be a taste thing. These "race" type mini-games annoy me in anything, so I was always going to hate this bit, but the graphics thing makes it SO much worse). Major overhauls and visual updates to the game make this part a nightmare because of how you have to move across Skyrim at breakneck speeds. The least irritating thing that could happen is that the task is so unfathomably laggy and janky while your game tries to keep up with you that you fail to reach the second point by the time limit (I cheesed this in my latest, visually demanding load order by having a flying mod and literally just going in a straight line over every conceivable obstacle). The worst that can happen is your game CTDs because... well... it's trying to keep up with you. And failing. Once I actually reached the second point's location, but the game didn't actually render it in time and I had to do the "race" again. Not my favorite part of this mod. Also: For some reason, triggering the initial stones in the three routes forces your game to autosave. So... you know. Be mindful of that.
The mod isn't particularly forthcoming with its objectives. That's not a criticism, just an acknowledgment. So don't really expect it to directly point to everything it wants from you, particularly early on.
I actually really enjoy the lore stuff and the spells are pretty awesome and innovative, in their own right. If you have a less taxing load order, definitely give it a try. If you just want the spells, however, there's a mod that has all of this one's spells without the questline. I just like the questline. But playing it on this new load order has been... challenging, so I figured I'd give a heads-up.
Why are you spoiling everything in the mod? It would frankly be better if you just left a vague "mod is jank, avoid" comment than ruin the fun for other people that want to give it a go.
Spoiler:
Show
The chandelier is one of the few things you can touch in that room/area, so you learn by doing. It isn't that hard to line yourself up. I got it after like 5 tries the first time I ever did the quest. God forbid the quest expect some minor effort from you. You can climb to the body in that room, it is intuitive because climbing that scaffold is, again, one of the few things you can do in that room. It's implicit that the fire in the middle of the room is there for some reason.. I immediately tried to cast something at it. That didn't work, what's my plan B? Hmm I wonder what's up on that scaffold?... I think next to the corpse is a note or journal hinting at what you do with the corpse. Once you're at the corpse, read the note, get the obvious hint, then drag the body to where it needs to be. If anything that note ruined my fun :( With the chasm, it's perfectly possible to get across without whirlwind sprint, just don't try to make it in one jump.
If anything I found the last trial of the snowelves to be unintuitive, but managed after dumb luck, which I think was the point. Though there's an issue if the enemies are behind a pillar or other terrain when the intervention happens, because you might not be able to dispose of them. If that happened and you then failed you might not know what is expected of you.
time-trails were fine, This mod can't be held accountable for everything else in your load-order.
Base Skyrim notoriously held your hand with everything (and everything still broke, but oh well), so maybe the true complaint is that this mod's style isn't in line with Skyrim? Skyrim holds your hand with objectives so much that if you turn off arrows or even worse avoid the journal you won't even be given a hint as to where to go.
My complaint would be that the enemies are really damn tough, but that's likely because you can't know for sure how cheesy your players' characters are going to be. Should you assume the average player has 40% magic resist baseline from Agent of Mara and Lord Stone? Are they a Breton on top of that? Do they put all their level-ups into health like a good little meta gamer, or are they a true wizard rper that puts at least a few levels into magicka? I'd hate to fight the bosses as a pure caster, I was only able to beat them with cheese. This mod's spells would likely help a bit though, for example spell interrupt or ones which stack effects and then let you unload them all for bonus damage (which would likely be overkill on lesser enemies). I'm thinking of giving the bosses another try without cheese. Here's hoping I have convenient saves.
^No, I concur with their point on the time trials. It's extremely weird to add. The game isn't meant for allowing you to travel at high speeds for a prolonged period of time, so adding a quest that forces you to do that is asking for people to have a bad time. Even when I didn't have a crazy load order, it was more annoying than fun. There's a reason the original creator decided to host just the spells and not the quest as well.
"If you just want the spells, however, there's a mod that has all of this one's spells without the questline" My favorit part is when you mentioned the name of the mod that has the spells
I like the concept of the mod. Good job on the spelltomb covers and such. I thought this mod added another land to explore but I guess I was wrong with that. Would have liked to see a bit more of the nine divines in this heavenly affair. The jargon with the C types, V types, etc was a little off-putting for my taste but I'm sure you had your reasons. Would have been cool for one of the stars in the untimes to portal you to aetherius to explore that area and maybe some quests where you meet the nine divines and do certain tasks for them. I think there is a mod out there that does something similar but I'm not sure which one it is. I know Mara channels the priestess in beyond reach and I think vigilant let's you travel to aetherius from coldharbor and erkaloth in midwood isle. I didn't get what I was expecting with this mod but I guess I probably should have read the spoilers before hand. Would have preferred there not be a destruction level requirement. Pretty interesting choices with the quests though so thank you for the mod in any case. Have a good day.
Just got done fighting Astetu... Took me 20 minutes to figure out that spells didn't work on him. Died 12 times after I figured it out because he would say "BEHOLD" and I would just go flying and die. The thirteenth try I finally beat him with a sword in a mage build... Then the game crashed, and it didn't save my progress... I'm done. Deleting the mod. The spells weren't even worth the stress I went through.
Spent 40 hours trying to complete the questlines and level up. I am throwing that save file in the TRASH. I realize that this isn't your mod's fault... I am just too mad to not take it out on someone.
How would I go about increasing the level requirement to start the quest? 5 is very early, especially when you have to be at destruction 90 to complete the quest and most people haven't even been summoned by the greybeards by level 5.
312 comments
Overall, the mod is very cool. The theming of the new magics is really interesting, though I feel many of the quests in the mod would not have been possible if I did not have other magic mods installed. I required spells to teleport myself across what I assumed were supposed to be nearly impossible platforming sections and of coruse some way to mitigate or negate fall damage entirely.
Touching on the actual final boss. The game is *wholly* unclear about what you are supposed to do in order to beat this cosmic being. No magic seems to work on him, regardless of what element or if it was from the mod or not. Being a casting only character this posed quite the problem. My only recommendation is to prepare ahead of time for this boss with some kind of strategy in hand, which if you're looking in this comment section probably means you're already fighting him and didn't do that. MY method of beating him was that I held up a very powerful ward spell, and used a perk from ordinator that prevented him from regenning magicka when I was within 25ft of him. I "Survived" with the ward spell long enough that began to try to punch me (Doing like 1 damage), and then I simpy conjured some beasties to kill him while I played defense
Overall, a very cool mod, but with the niche uses of the spells, inaccessible quests, and downright infurating boss fight I find this very difficult to recommend to anyone
EDIT: I was curious, so I dropped difficulty down to novice and reloaded the autosave it gives you in the boss fight. Just to see if I could figure out what mechanic I was missing.... turns out, this MASSIVE man of a final boss, has a hitbox of: His feet. As someone who was playing in third person and using true directional movement, I tried locking on and apparently that was the wrong play. He is NOT immune to magic, he simply has a small hitbox
Excuse my english
There's one quest relatively early on when you have to absorb the first Luminous Skyshard. At one point you have to jump down into a pit to get a key from a corpse. The only way back up is to perfectly align yourself with this weird chandelier on the ground and activate it so it lets out some kind of pulse and knocks you back up to the ledge you jumped down from. It's not remotely intuitive, though. So unless you want to be fiddling with it for an hour, mods that let you fly/levitate, super jump, or point-teleport are handy at that part. Later, in the same mission, you need to get a body down from a platform to get the journal it has, among other things. Getting it isn't the most intuitive thing in the world but if you just cast enough explosive spells at it, it'll eventually just fall down or at least sleep enough that you can drag it the rest of the way and carry on. (sidenote: I dunno if this was me "cheating" or not, but there's this big chasm at the start of that dungeon. I got across it by using Whirlwind Sprint, which is the only possible vanilla way to get across it, but it may be you're actually supposed to drop down it. If so, I can't help with anything at the bottom of that as I skipped it in both playthroughs.)
The next Skyshard you have to get (an underwater Snow Elf temple), there aren't really any puzzles, just challenges. Avoid getting hit by the thing on the ceiling in the first major room. In the next room you just have to survive for a while.
Getting all the other Sky Shards is pretty straightforward. No recommendations or anything there.
When you get to the quest "A Message To The Orphans," you're gonna have a bad time if your load order is really graphics intensive. It is one of the single most tedious and annoying things I've played in a good while (and, frankly, even completely removed from it being a pain with graphics-intensive load orders, like... I just don't get why it's here? That could be a taste thing. These "race" type mini-games annoy me in anything, so I was always going to hate this bit, but the graphics thing makes it SO much worse). Major overhauls and visual updates to the game make this part a nightmare because of how you have to move across Skyrim at breakneck speeds. The least irritating thing that could happen is that the task is so unfathomably laggy and janky while your game tries to keep up with you that you fail to reach the second point by the time limit (I cheesed this in my latest, visually demanding load order by having a flying mod and literally just going in a straight line over every conceivable obstacle). The worst that can happen is your game CTDs because... well... it's trying to keep up with you. And failing. Once I actually reached the second point's location, but the game didn't actually render it in time and I had to do the "race" again. Not my favorite part of this mod. Also: For some reason, triggering the initial stones in the three routes forces your game to autosave. So... you know. Be mindful of that.
The mod isn't particularly forthcoming with its objectives. That's not a criticism, just an acknowledgment. So don't really expect it to directly point to everything it wants from you, particularly early on.
I actually really enjoy the lore stuff and the spells are pretty awesome and innovative, in their own right. If you have a less taxing load order, definitely give it a try. If you just want the spells, however, there's a mod that has all of this one's spells without the questline. I just like the questline. But playing it on this new load order has been... challenging, so I figured I'd give a heads-up.
It would frankly be better if you just left a vague "mod is jank, avoid" comment than ruin the fun for other people that want to give it a go.
The chandelier is one of the few things you can touch in that room/area, so you learn by doing. It isn't that hard to line yourself up. I got it after like 5 tries the first time I ever did the quest. God forbid the quest expect some minor effort from you.
You can climb to the body in that room, it is intuitive because climbing that scaffold is, again, one of the few things you can do in that room. It's implicit that the fire in the middle of the room is there for some reason.. I immediately tried to cast something at it. That didn't work, what's my plan B? Hmm I wonder what's up on that scaffold?...
I think next to the corpse is a note or journal hinting at what you do with the corpse. Once you're at the corpse, read the note, get the obvious hint, then drag the body to where it needs to be. If anything that note ruined my fun :(
With the chasm, it's perfectly possible to get across without whirlwind sprint, just don't try to make it in one jump.
If anything I found the last trial of the snowelves to be unintuitive, but managed after dumb luck, which I think was the point. Though there's an issue if the enemies are behind a pillar or other terrain when the intervention happens, because you might not be able to dispose of them.
If that happened and you then failed you might not know what is expected of you.
time-trails were fine, This mod can't be held accountable for everything else in your load-order.
Base Skyrim notoriously held your hand with everything (and everything still broke, but oh well), so maybe the true complaint is that this mod's style isn't in line with Skyrim? Skyrim holds your hand with objectives so much that if you turn off arrows or even worse avoid the journal you won't even be given a hint as to where to go.
My complaint would be that the enemies are really damn tough, but that's likely because you can't know for sure how cheesy your players' characters are going to be. Should you assume the average player has 40% magic resist baseline from Agent of Mara and Lord Stone? Are they a Breton on top of that?
Do they put all their level-ups into health like a good little meta gamer, or are they a true wizard rper that puts at least a few levels into magicka?
I'd hate to fight the bosses as a pure caster, I was only able to beat them with cheese. This mod's spells would likely help a bit though, for example spell interrupt or ones which stack effects and then let you unload them all for bonus damage (which would likely be overkill on lesser enemies).
I'm thinking of giving the bosses another try without cheese. Here's hoping I have convenient saves.
My favorit part is when you mentioned the name of the mod that has the spells
Spent 40 hours trying to complete the questlines and level up. I am throwing that save file in the TRASH. I realize that this isn't your mod's fault... I am just too mad to not take it out on someone.