I would like to start off by thanking you for making the quest mode. But what on earth is it like to hear a scream as soon as you enter the dungeon? It's really not a joke, I almost had a heart attack. If elements like this occur frequently, shouldn't there at least be a warning in the mod introduction?
Greetings. Has anyone made a walk through yet? I'm having trouble in Esskevarn and can't locate the thief. Earlier I couldn't find the Warrior either, but then when I went through it again, I found a draugr that I killed that hadn't disappeared yet that happened to be the Warrior. I didn't know he was a boss and had neglected to lift the sigil stone earlier.
At this point, I'm pretty sure I've opened every gate and door except the one behind the tome stand in the charus/tome room, and after using tcl, I'm pretty sure I've been through the entire complex several times over.
I cannot find that guy dead or alive. I would guess I've probably already killed him but every dead draugr I've double and triple checked is not him so far. I hope he hasn't disappeared after I left an area without getting the sigil stone.
Mr. Cryptdick, how about putting an arrow on these bosses at least after they are killed? I get not doing it before hand for that kind of game challenge of having to explore, but maybe a little help after the bosses are found and defeated. Of course the mage was very obvious but the Warrior, less so, I thought I was just killing another draugr.
Esskevarn Is pretty straight forward. The thief didn't activate on my first pass through so I had to go back through the dungeon. When you find the 4 pillars with a handle in the middle of them that shoot flames at you when activated, the thief is sitting in a chair up on the ledge. I had to attack to get it to activate, then loot the body.
I'm currently in Yralchond and have been through it 3 times but still can't figure out what to do to get through the cobwebs to get the tome.
I'll check it again. I cleared that room and I'm pretty sure that there are no dead draugrs left in that room. I guess I might have to reset the cell or the whole dungeon.
Well this is a bummer. I went back in there and searched the room thoroughly. The thief is gone. And I thought it would be a simple matter to reset the cell. I couldn't find the name of the cell, when I typed help location into the console, I got some message like "no valid strings" or something like that. I don't think it was that, but at any rate, it wouldn't give me the info I think I need to reset it. I thought I'd then google resetting the dungeon and I didn't get any console commands on that but a suggestion to wait 30 days, which isn't guaranteed to work since this is a mod. And I'm not in a rush to do that.
Try loading a save from before you went through that area, sometimes it works. I've also had to quit and go to desktop and restart the game to get some cells to reset. The Aesir armor/dungeon mod was one that I had to do that with for some reason.
spawning the thief... okay. Any idea how to do that? Is there an id for that? Also any id for that sigil stone. Someone said they did that in this forum and it didn't work but I assume that they generated a sigil stone from the vanilla game. If it requires mining the data for that info, that's a new animal to me. I'd google it if it were vanilla, but I find there's just about nothing out there for this particular Tempest Isle. As for reloading before this dungeon, my last save before this dungeon is back further than I want to go. I just may wait for 30 days even though that isn't a sure thing.
If you don't mind, when you get through Yralchond, let me know how you get through the cobwebs to get the tome. I tried flames , shooting them with arrows, and hitting them with my sword, but nothing would break them. I eventually used the console to disable them and went on my way.
I'm genuinely curious if I overlooked something, or if I was experiencing a glitch/bug of some sort.
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/106441 Backported Extended ESL Support
If you do not see the ship next to the farm north of Windhelm, install this mod. If you are in the middle of the game, open the esp of the mod with sseedit, change the version from 1.71 to 1.7, and try to proceed.
I've seen them do that, in the real world. One winter, on my street, there was a very strong prevailing wind blowing from north to south and when the icicles formed they were horizontal.
I can understand your confusion, cuz there be real icicles and magicicles in the same spot. But it's clear that the cicles sticking out from the walls are magic, and ones that are hanging down are ice.
I killed the warrior and didn't even know it. I was just rushing through and didn't pay attention to the fact that he's labelled "the warrior." But I was still able to locate him dead and lift the sigil stone from him long afterward. Strangely, he's in the room I found him in with his body hovering over the floor with only his feet touching and he's twitching. Maybe I didn't kill him, maybe he's just wigging out from too much skooma.
He's the draugr on the game of thrones throne that has the weapons sticking out of the top that has a switch in the back of it. It's hard not to run into that room so if you haven't found it yet, I don't know what to tell you. It's hard not to run into that room in the first phases of the dungeon.
If you've been in there and no dead draugr, I guess you've got a bug. Maybe use a script to reload the cell if that's the case.
I currently have problems finding the thief. That's the last sigil I need and I'm pretty sure I've been through the entire dungeon so I assume he's like the warrior for me, dead somewhere and I didn't look through his inventory sufficiently. But I've been through the dungeon several times over now and none of the dead draugrs I can find are the thief.
It's kind of ironic that they are dead draugrs. They are already dead! So I guess they are twice dead, like a twice baked potato.
Open the console and type "help esskevarn" without the quotes. You should see the sigils and then you can use the console to add them to your inventory as needed. You could also try spawning the warrior with console commands.
This is what it shows for the warrior in my system. Name: The Esskevarn Warrior Base form ID: 5324DB2F Ref form ID: 5324DB2B
If you're saying the above steps don't work then you may have a bugged game.
Excellent adventure! Lots of good feedback from people and I only have 1 suggestion (besides finishing it, cuz it's awesome). The 3 bosses Mage Thief and Warrior. Please consider putting a marker on the token they carry, similar to Valthume(?) where you gather 3 vessels. I couldn't find the Mage one and couldn't remember if I'd killed him or whatnot, and the dungeon is difficult to explore easily, so I spent an hour of frustration and eventually consoled it in. That's it really, the difficulty, plot and quests were great, and of course the voice acting and level design is top notch. Thanks for making this Cryptdick!
Just finished this and I quite enjoyed it although, as others have said, it is quite short. There are a lot of areas yet to be utilised. Please be aware, that if you want to take followers with you, ensure that they are ones that can be teleported to you, as there are quite a few areas not fully navmeshed. For example Gale's End (Player home) won't let followers enter. I re-navmeshed this myself and everything was ok then. Also, if you fast travel to Gale's End, it puts you down on the roof! lol
As others have said- This has all the makings of a great mod, I adore the environment, reminds me of North Sea Islands battered by the waves. The voice acting is of good quality and despite my modlist I haven't encountered any bugs of note.
I will say that it is not however finished, but still a mod worthy of your mod list if you are looking for a nice northern interlude during your Nordic adventures as what is there is of at least vanilla quality, with the environment being of generally higher quality than the base game. (additional preface, I have played this through once, there might be content I missed, or story points that went over my head, but I'm pretty sure I found everything of significance, if I haven't lmk author)
However I do have some constructive criticism, some of these are minor, whilst others I think need addressing to make this truly stellar- going from most significant changes downwards:
The main quest imo is rather short, doesn't flow particularly well narratively. For one I would suggest that the quest for the bloodlight tomes be made into side content- from a roleplaying perspective the tomes were way too sinister for my character to realistically use- additionally the tomes don't even need using to beat the last quest. Even so the narrative of searching for the tomes and saving the isle feels rather disjointed and there should be a small bit of breathing room between recovering the tomes (or whatever quest replaces it) and finishing the MQ. Something like establishing a alliance with the giants would be a nice break before the final showdown, seeing some Giants turn Orcs into Saturn V rockets wouldn't hurt anyone(else). This is just an idea of the top of my head.
There needs to be some more side content besides exploration. One idea would be aiding in the rebuilding of Briadwyth and other places.
The Orcs need more depth, why are they all red? Is it something to do with the bloodlight tomes? Why are they attacking? It seems they are after the tomes but this is conjecture on my part. Perhaps these questions are answered but I found them not. Ideally a non violent way of resolving things between the orcs and the Isle would be fantastic- perhaps curing the orcs of their red skin might be one step. Perhaps three quest paths could be done- pro Islander, pro orcish and neutral/peaceful.
Some lore books would be a fantastic way of fleshing out the world. I'd even offer my services if you are interested. Also the odd unique weapon/artifact would be another way to flesh out some of the world.
I'd love if the giants at the fort were fleshed out- I could see a funny quest of trying to buy some nords precious cow as a sacrifice to appease the giants.
The only kinda bugs I noticed- none of these had any major affect on my feelings on this mod. More polishing the mod:
There seems to be no idle markers- bandits at the camps literally stand endlessly until they become hostile. Would bring more life to this Isle. Going off this the player home has none either- followers in my house literally just stand there saying nothing whatsoever. In fact my followers were pretty much mute during this entire mod.
I feel as though the north east island is in quite the unfinished state, this is understandable, however some placeholder location markers would be a nice way to integrate this land.
Gwynnevir seems to have a different name to activate/talk to, and the quest log refers to her as yet another name- 3 different names. I'm unsure if this is a bug on my end or not. She also seems to disappear from the worldspace after fetching the tomes.
The quest markers always point the character to the dungeon exit rather than the main entrance, as such exploration is currently required to discover the actual path.
This is all written with the best of intentions, I want this mod to be up their with Vigilant, Wyrmstooth and the like. These are the best steps I could think of. The worldspace environment might be my favourite of all Skyrim mods (bar maybe Vigilant it's a tough one considering how different they are). One of the only mods to truly capture the feeling of being on a small water swept rock in the sea of ghosts.
Very good assessment and criticism, I suppose a lot of it has to do with the overall mod goals being a moving target that I've had to reassess over and over again. Some of the stuff you mentioned like the Giants and red orc backstories being fleshed out was originally planned but the overall scope of the mod went way overboard into "feature creep" and I've had to dial it back significantly once I realized my own limitations and time constraints after putting just a couple years of work into the project to develop the worldspace. The northeast isle is still completely WIP and I hope to flesh that out fully, I probably should never have added it since it added a significant amount of work but I felt like it was necessary to fill some empty space and make the worldspace feel more balanced. I'll do my best to keep working on this and there may be major reworks in the future.
Edit: You're also right on the money about the Bloodlight Tomes not playing enough into the mod, I wanted to build an entire storyline around the red orcs essentially being the descendants of the ancient cult mentioned in the storyline but that's another major segment that's been scrapped due to the amount of scripting that would be involved - things like having to use Bloodlight spells to open up certain dungeons where the Tomes are located, lots of quest-related stuff about making the story more fleshed out and so on. It feels like the pieces are all there, but it's like a puzzle with a million pieces right now. There was also an entire Part 2 of the storyline planned that would take the player to an entirely new worldspace of similar size, but what I have right now already took 5 years of work and I can't find a lot of consistent help (Vactrol is amazing for contributing as much as he did)
I'll also add that I am very open to the community helping contribute to this mod in any way, feel free to join my modding Discord that's listed on the homepage and offer help. I'm really more of a level design modder from prior experience (and I've thankfully had a lot of great feedback on that front) but things like scripting and difficulty balancing take me an immense amount of time to trial/error. I'm not sure what it takes to get other modders on-board to help with a project of this scope, and I've tried many times to get others involved but I know everybody's busy with their own projects.
Ayy no worries, like I said this mod was a nice venture to go on and even with the criticism I had it's defo staying on my list, always felt like Skyrim needed some Island holds as well. I also appreciate that it's made with a small team and the foundations are there to make this one of the better new land/quest mods.
Also I can't praise the environment enough, beautiful in places but also cold and isolating in others. In ways it fits perfectly with Skyrim whilst also standing alone and in solitude. Feels fantastic! The Dwemer ruin under the sea is unique in that it is the only Dwemer dungeon in vanilla and mods (bar maybe Blackreach) that looks like an actual liveable city whilst providing great vertical and horizontal exploration, I wish other dungeons people made looked as lived as this place. Seeing this I'm making a requirement of including your other mods for my next playthrough.
Also sound design around the Bloodlight tomes is remarkably sinister, as a musician that loves doing weird things with sometimes ominous noises I really loved it :D made me jump out of my skin at one point.
Two more things from memory as well that would be a super quick fix is that the archer enemies on the island only carry one arrow, which for game mechanics is fine, however it means that visually the quiver they carry only has one arrow in it. I'd consider is removing the helmet from the Jarl when you first meet him as without a face it's kind of hard to get as much feeling from him. idk its a game haha
I'm busy this weekend but when I've got time I'll hop onto the discord and send some book/history ideas over that I wrote in Take Notes mod in game thinking about the island. I have no experience whatsoever modding, but I'd gladly help in any way I can.
244 comments
It's really not a joke, I almost had a heart attack. If elements like this occur frequently, shouldn't there at least be a warning in the mod introduction?
(I hate jumpscares >_>)
At this point, I'm pretty sure I've opened every gate and door except the one behind the tome stand in the charus/tome room, and after using tcl, I'm pretty sure I've been through the entire complex several times over.
I cannot find that guy dead or alive. I would guess I've probably already killed him but every dead draugr I've double and triple checked is not him so far. I hope he hasn't disappeared after I left an area without getting the sigil stone.
Mr. Cryptdick, how about putting an arrow on these bosses at least after they are killed? I get not doing it before hand for that kind of game challenge of having to explore, but maybe a little help after the bosses are found and defeated. Of course the mage was very obvious but the Warrior, less so, I thought I was just killing another draugr.
I'm currently in Yralchond and have been through it 3 times but still can't figure out what to do to get through the cobwebs to get the tome.
This is the info I get when clicking on the thief from my system.
Name: The Thief
Base form ID: 0003B542
Ref form ID: 53254915
The item id for the thief sigil in my system is 530A542B.
Hope this helps.
I'm genuinely curious if I overlooked something, or if I was experiencing a glitch/bug of some sort.
If you do not see the ship next to the farm north of Windhelm, install this mod. If you are in the middle of the game, open the esp of the mod with sseedit, change the version from 1.71 to 1.7, and try to proceed.
He's the draugr on the game of thrones throne that has the weapons sticking out of the top that has a switch in the back of it. It's hard not to run into that room so if you haven't found it yet, I don't know what to tell you. It's hard not to run into that room in the first phases of the dungeon.
If you've been in there and no dead draugr, I guess you've got a bug. Maybe use a script to reload the cell if that's the case.
I currently have problems finding the thief. That's the last sigil I need and I'm pretty sure I've been through the entire dungeon so I assume he's like the warrior for me, dead somewhere and I didn't look through his inventory sufficiently. But I've been through the dungeon several times over now and none of the dead draugrs I can find are the thief.
It's kind of ironic that they are dead draugrs. They are already dead! So I guess they are twice dead, like a twice baked potato.
This is what it shows for the warrior in my system.
Name: The Esskevarn Warrior
Base form ID: 5324DB2F
Ref form ID: 5324DB2B
If you're saying the above steps don't work then you may have a bugged game.
I will say that it is not however finished, but still a mod worthy of your mod list if you are looking for a nice northern interlude during your Nordic adventures as what is there is of at least vanilla quality, with the environment being of generally higher quality than the base game.
(additional preface, I have played this through once, there might be content I missed, or story points that went over my head, but I'm pretty sure I found everything of significance, if I haven't lmk author)
However I do have some constructive criticism, some of these are minor, whilst others I think need addressing to make this truly stellar- going from most significant changes downwards:
The main quest imo is rather short, doesn't flow particularly well narratively. For one I would suggest that the quest for the bloodlight tomes be made into side content- from a roleplaying perspective the tomes were way too sinister for my character to realistically use- additionally the tomes don't even need using to beat the last quest. Even so the narrative of searching for the tomes and saving the isle feels rather disjointed and there should be a small bit of breathing room between recovering the tomes (or whatever quest replaces it) and finishing the MQ. Something like establishing a alliance with the giants would be a nice break before the final showdown, seeing some Giants turn Orcs into Saturn V rockets wouldn't hurt anyone(else). This is just an idea of the top of my head.
There needs to be some more side content besides exploration. One idea would be aiding in the rebuilding of Briadwyth and other places.
The Orcs need more depth, why are they all red? Is it something to do with the bloodlight tomes? Why are they attacking? It seems they are after the tomes but this is conjecture on my part. Perhaps these questions are answered but I found them not.
Ideally a non violent way of resolving things between the orcs and the Isle would be fantastic- perhaps curing the orcs of their red skin might be one step.
Perhaps three quest paths could be done- pro Islander, pro orcish and neutral/peaceful.
Some lore books would be a fantastic way of fleshing out the world. I'd even offer my services if you are interested. Also the odd unique weapon/artifact would be another way to flesh out some of the world.
I'd love if the giants at the fort were fleshed out- I could see a funny quest of trying to buy some nords precious cow as a sacrifice to appease the giants.
The only kinda bugs I noticed- none of these had any major affect on my feelings on this mod. More polishing the mod:
There seems to be no idle markers- bandits at the camps literally stand endlessly until they become hostile. Would bring more life to this Isle. Going off this the player home has none either- followers in my house literally just stand there saying nothing whatsoever. In fact my followers were pretty much mute during this entire mod.
I feel as though the north east island is in quite the unfinished state, this is understandable, however some placeholder location markers would be a nice way to integrate this land.
Gwynnevir seems to have a different name to activate/talk to, and the quest log refers to her as yet another name- 3 different names. I'm unsure if this is a bug on my end or not. She also seems to disappear from the worldspace after fetching the tomes.
The quest markers always point the character to the dungeon exit rather than the main entrance, as such exploration is currently required to discover the actual path.
This is all written with the best of intentions, I want this mod to be up their with Vigilant, Wyrmstooth and the like. These are the best steps I could think of. The worldspace environment might be my favourite of all Skyrim mods (bar maybe Vigilant it's a tough one considering how different they are). One of the only mods to truly capture the feeling of being on a small water swept rock in the sea of ghosts.
Edit: You're also right on the money about the Bloodlight Tomes not playing enough into the mod, I wanted to build an entire storyline around the red orcs essentially being the descendants of the ancient cult mentioned in the storyline but that's another major segment that's been scrapped due to the amount of scripting that would be involved - things like having to use Bloodlight spells to open up certain dungeons where the Tomes are located, lots of quest-related stuff about making the story more fleshed out and so on. It feels like the pieces are all there, but it's like a puzzle with a million pieces right now. There was also an entire Part 2 of the storyline planned that would take the player to an entirely new worldspace of similar size, but what I have right now already took 5 years of work and I can't find a lot of consistent help (Vactrol is amazing for contributing as much as he did)
Also I can't praise the environment enough, beautiful in places but also cold and isolating in others. In ways it fits perfectly with Skyrim whilst also standing alone and in solitude. Feels fantastic! The Dwemer ruin under the sea is unique in that it is the only Dwemer dungeon in vanilla and mods (bar maybe Blackreach) that looks like an actual liveable city whilst providing great vertical and horizontal exploration, I wish other dungeons people made looked as lived as this place. Seeing this I'm making a requirement of including your other mods for my next playthrough.
Also sound design around the Bloodlight tomes is remarkably sinister, as a musician that loves doing weird things with sometimes ominous noises I really loved it :D made me jump out of my skin at one point.
Two more things from memory as well that would be a super quick fix is that the archer enemies on the island only carry one arrow, which for game mechanics is fine, however it means that visually the quiver they carry only has one arrow in it. I'd consider is removing the helmet from the Jarl when you first meet him as without a face it's kind of hard to get as much feeling from him. idk its a game haha
I'm busy this weekend but when I've got time I'll hop onto the discord and send some book/history ideas over that I wrote in Take Notes mod in game thinking about the island. I have no experience whatsoever modding, but I'd gladly help in any way I can.